Right? A dime is a touch over 18mm, and prices I’ve been able to nail down on a couple sites for artificial rubies of that size, while way less than terrestrial rubies, cannot be considered ”cheap” - we’re still talking thousands of dollars.

Yeah, if anybody finds these cheap rubies do let me know, I'd love to buy them

https://cascadejewels.com/

I searched lab grown rubies and these guys seem to be pricing near to that cost. They seem legit from a cursory search but i haven't looked that deep.

If the "peasants can afford it" it's not desirable.

As I understand it the artificial diamond industry has gotten so good, they can now even create diamonds with imperfections that mimic natural diamonds. To the point where the only way they can tell the difference is to micro etch something on the natural diamonds.

That's why I got her a platinum ring with no stones. Much better pawn value.

Yeah, I love how marketing guys have come up with "the faults prove that it's real leather! Not like that flawless fake stuff!"

The amount of work that goes into something is what makes it valueable

Hello, I'm Tim Cook and let me tell about all the hard work that went into this monitor stand

Just realized that was satire, but anyway I already started writing so I'm posting it lol.

Labor theory of value was outdated to centuries ago.

Labor sets a minimum value when stuff is in demand, but without demand the value can be zero despite how much effort was put into it.

forgot the /s

article: https://bruh.news/?article/are-lab-grown-gems-the-answer-to-child-labor

There are a couple of online retailers that specialize in it. That's what we ended up doing for my wife's engagement ring and wedding band. It noticeably sparkles in direct sun, she gets comments on it pretty often.

I love the sparkle of my Moissanites so much better than my diamonds.

Something like this actually happened. There was a super rare element that was shiny and light weight and incredibly rare. They made the crown jewels of France out of it so the King could show off the wealth of the country to everyone by having this unique and rare element in his crown.

Then they discovered a chemical process to extract this incredibly rare element from bauxite.

Now we make pop cans out of it. Yep, aluminum was at one time a precious metal.

also the global gold market would collapse into dust

Cheap and plentiful gold would be a boon for a lot of applications that require resistance to water corrosion, so even after the initial collapse, its price would slowly creep up again.

A lot of jewelry boutiques sell both these days. When I bought an engagement ring, most places I looked have both lab grown and mined diamonds as options when you pick a diamond for the ring.

Most reputable dealers claim to have cruelty-free sources, but synthetic diamonds were about half the price, so I still think buying mined diamonds is a bit silly.

This happens sometimes for me too. You can try opening it in browser, but I'll write a transcription for our screen-reader-using friends, too.

Transcription:

tlirsgender | Nov 6, 2020

Weird peeve time. Calling lab grown gemstones "fake" is stupid because it's the same shit just not formed naturally. An artificially grown diamond is the same shit as a natural diamond it is the exact same material bro it's all fuckign carbon

spacefroggity | 45m ago

It's carbon it's pretty and it didn't involve slave labor what's not to love??? Hi I'm having geology opinions tonight apparently. And I'm right

spacefroggity | 45m ago

There is so much bullshit in the diamonds industry to be mad about tbh. It also ties into the bullshit of the wedding industry as a whole but we don't have the time to unpack all that

val-ritz | Nov 29, 2020

not even going to lie, the day i learned i could get like 15 lab grown rubies the size of dimes for $20 is the day i spent $20 on rubies, and i have never once said to myself "man, i wish this cost $1,600 and the lives of eight children to produce

fuckyeahmineralogy | Dec 8, 2020

We are a pro-lab-grown mineral blog here, not only is it massively cheaper but massively more ethical as well in many cases.

thegreenpea | Mar 8, 2021

another very cool lab grown gem is Moissanite. It has a 9.25 on the mohs hardness scale where diamond is a 10. Moissanote also has a 2.69 refractive index in comparison to diamond's 2.419 and here is the difference

and the best thing about moissanite? It is all lab grown and it costs only a fraction of what diamond costs. So fuck the diamond indsutry and buy lab grown gems which cost significantly less

rubixpsyche | Aug 6, 2021

Also it's just cool to think of some mad scientist lookin person doing shit against the law of the universe and making pretty gems for you. Like cmon. This shouldnt be allowed probably. But humans really be like on gOD i want some shiny an just started MAKIN em

dadzathechaosgod | 46m ago

for years people wanted alchemy, well now we have alchemy and we're making gemstones out of it and suddenly "it doesn't count" anymore

It loads for me, that's weird