[alexggordon]

I've always wondered if there's a space for some serious disruption in this industry. One of the things I've always seen, having gone to lots of auctions as a kid, is that you can buy diamond rings for a fraction of the price on the auction block. Even if you just rip the diamond out, and set it in a new ring, you'd be saving money, not to mention the metals you have left over from the ring.

If there were a company whose sole purpose was reselling jewelry like this at a pretty big markdown from competitors, I wonder how sustainable/successful it would be, because I know I would support it.

Part of my thinking about this is just my desire to "stick it to the bad guys", but part of it really is a recognition that traditions aren't going to change over night, so we might as well try to save some people a little money.

[BinaryIdiot]

> I've always wondered if there's a space for some serious disruption in this industry.

Not sure about how to do the disruption on Earth but when we can start, effectively, mining asteroids? Well precious metals should be able to take a nose dive. Not sure how much diamonds exist in asteroids but I wouldn't be surprised if a company can effectively mine asteroids to disrupt all precious metal industries.

[alexggordon]

Along those same lines, I think eventually we're going to be able to drill into earths crust, or some other incredibly high pressure place and possible just mine the diamonds from there[0]. That said though, I haven't heard anything about planetary resources recently[1]...

[0] http://geology.about.com/od/mantle/a/The-Diamond-Zone.htm [1] http://www.planetaryresources.com/

[michaelbuckbee]

I've always thought the same thing. Something that continues to fascinate me is that there are people selling/reselling jewelry on Craigslist [1]

Which makes sense for the network effects, but seems far from perfect as there's no appraisal, setting choices, etc.

http://norfolk.craigslist.org/search/jwa