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And gold too. I mean it’s just a shiny metal that’s only real practical use is as a conductor when copper won’t do for some reason.
Yeah, & if you needed a better conductor than Gold, then you’d be better-off with Platinum.
CORRECTION:
I meant Silver, not Platinum, sorry.
Gold is also nicely maliable, and doesn’t rust. Unlike copper, silver, and platinum. It’s common enough to be available, but rare enough to have value. With Fallout series using ‘caps’ for money there have been several interesting videos posted about the nature of ‘money’. One had a scientist describe the properties needed for a trade resource, then went through the periodic table and eleminated each unsuitable element (can’t be gas, must be storable, can’t degrade over time, must be common without being too plentiful, can’t be toxic/ radioactive) after going through the entire table he was left with just gold. So it was inevitable that gold is used as money.
Actually, unless you’re the owner of a jewelry store, they’re not valuable at all.
They are neither rare nor especially difficult to acquire. Not only would Farah have to find a qualified buyer for her uncut diamonds, she’s unlikely to get more than a few hundred dollars for even a sizable fistful of them.
The whole reason behind the slogan “A Diamond is Forever” is to discourage people from trying to sell their jewelry (in particular, engagement rings) back to the store, which will only offer a buyback price pined to the real value of the piece… something in the ballpark of 1% the absurdly inflated price it was sold for.
Other common beliefs that the DeBeer’s Diamond monopoly has entirely made up in order to sell more diamonds.
-The entire “tradition” of giving engagement rings at all (started less than 100 years ago, in the 1930s)
-the idea that an “appropriate” price for an engagement ring is roughly equivalent to 2 months of the future groom’s income. (A number they made up to boost sales)
-That marriages beginning with a huge debt, blown on an intrinsically worthless rock, will “last forever” (statistically more marriages disintegrate over money problems than any other cause).
I do believe that diamonds are valuable in industry for various purposes.
True. Industrial diamonds are used for the cutting and grinding of very hard materials, for optical devices, such as lasers, for heat dissipation, and for diamond coatings to produce enhanced wear resistance.
Plastic is also very useful in industrial equipment; that doesn’t make it a valuable material.
I concede I was indulging in hyperbole a bit to say that diamonds are “not valuable at all”; they are just not worth anything remotely like the Debeers diamond company and the jewelry industry would have their customers believe.
And then you have LeVian marketing “Chocolate Diamonds” and others doing the same with assorted “candy diamonds” – all of them in assorted colors – as premium stones. Thirty years ago, natural “Chocolate Diamonds” were still being broken down to make industrial abrasives. Today, commercially produced (mostly in China) diamond dust has entirely undercut the market for the natural abrasives!
Amazing what one learns in a marketing class!