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Strategies & Market Trends : John Pitera's Market Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ajtj99 who wrote (10614)	11/19/2008 11:27:38 PM
From: John Pitera	Respond to of 33421

AJ, the real trick in diamonds is to have a very minor imperfection in the stone such as a minor cloud or a small crystal in it which to dumb it down would be a very tiny diamond developing in a larger stone. stores of value are always somewhat arbitrary..... but I have seen stones that were bought from TIF at the top of the market bubble in 2000 for 100K that are now appraised at 265K. Now commodities have done well during that time period as well.... Particular stones, collectible art, coins, stamps etc.... can often have positive returns due to the relative scarcity. JOhn

To: ajtj99 who wrote (10614)	11/20/2008 2:25:37 AM
From: Stoctrash	Respond to of 33421

<<I think in 20-years DeBeers is going to be history.>> DeBeers from what I'm told is a very big player in the synthetic background. Don't screw with them. I was recently at a location that has some of the old GE presses used to make synthetic diamond for industrial use. They've be retrofitted to pump out poly-crystalline diamond (PCD) for tooling. Sorry.. they wouldn't let me take pictures for some reason?? :-) Read up on Tracy Hall & the GE projects to learn more. en.wikipedia.org