Great read. Amazing what wealthy interests can do to a market. I had to smile at the ending:
"By the mid-1980s, the avalanche of Australian diamonds will be pouring onto the market. Unless the resourceful managers of De Beers can find a way to gain control of the various sources of diamonds that will soon crowd the market, these sources may bring about the final collapse of world diamond prices. If they do, the diamond invention will disintegrate and be remembered only as a historical curiosity, as brilliant in its way as the glittering little stones it once made so valuable."
As the diamond market hasn't collapsed 30 years on, De Beers must still be doing something right.
I've held a plastic bag of raw Australian diamonds -- they look like dirty grainy sand. Almost all of the Kimberley pipe's output is industrial quality, not gem quality, although the pink gemstones are very nice.
Australian gem quality output was never going to seriously disrupt De Beers, just challenge them a bit. That was known at the time, and I'm slightly perplexed why The Atlantic's article says what is does.
"By the mid-1980s, the avalanche of Australian diamonds will be pouring onto the market. Unless the resourceful managers of De Beers can find a way to gain control of the various sources of diamonds that will soon crowd the market, these sources may bring about the final collapse of world diamond prices. If they do, the diamond invention will disintegrate and be remembered only as a historical curiosity, as brilliant in its way as the glittering little stones it once made so valuable."
As the diamond market hasn't collapsed 30 years on, De Beers must still be doing something right.