[Rockhounds] Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and
valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a relatively recent
development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth
century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the
jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem diamonds amounted
to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were
discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon
being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with
diamonds. The British financiers who had organized the South African mines
quickly realized that their investment was endangered; diamonds had little
intrinsic value—and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity.
The financiers feared that when new mines were developed in South Africa,
diamonds would become at best only semiprecious gems.
The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no
alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be
powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of
scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De
Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers
took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many
forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond
Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it
was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling
Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black
Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with
names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its
height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or
controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond
trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and
Switzerland.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/