April 2024 | Lab Grown Magazine

April 2024 | The Lab Grown Diamond Resource Book 22 Mailed to 24,000 Jewelers Monthly - To advertise call (888) 832-1109 | April 2024 23 Consider flat screen televisions and their major price decline in recent years. Introduced in 2018, large screen televisions encased in slender “flat” frames allowed families to save space and modernize their living and bedrooms by hanging their new flat screen TVs on their walls. With enhanced picture clarity, much larger screens and superior built-in sound, these TVs were in demand from inception and people paid thousands of dollars for them. Flat screen opening prices were up to four times as high as the previous “box-style” television. The U.S. National Retail Federation (NRF) released a price plummet graph showing a forty percent drop in TV prices from 2018 to 2023. Keep in mind each year brought higher quality and larger flat screen units to market. As the technology advanced, so did the competition. China took the American invention and our once high production domination from America for their own country profit. You can already see the direct comparison to that of LGD price reductions, and production-related issues and we’ve only addressed one example. Here’s another: Bloomberg recently published research from Indx on the deep declining price of digital cameras. Realizing everyone has a digital camera built into his or her phone, professional digital cameras are still a hot commodity; yet look at the historical price plummets of such from their US launch. Bottom line: Especially in technology, which again, LGDS are, expect new product to be improved post initial launch, along with faster and higher quality production. And in LGDs situation… much larger stones while maintaining a Type IIa value. Digital camera retail prices dropped by 87% since 2010 Want a cheaper digital camera? Wait a year. Bloomberg’s headline and related digital camera price graphic concurred with (bottom) SIS International Research on an almost immediate price plunge noted at a eighty-seven percent retail price drop from 2010 to 2019. This is due to the number of vendors offering such and/or the market being taken overseas with very low labor costs and massive factories churning out carat after carat. LGDs were expected to fall in price. Don’t fall for the hype that LGD price drops means a drop in interest. The complete opposite is apparent. When people read about the price decline in LGDs, they tend to think of a graph steadily falling. Again, the opposite is true. A review of LGD prices in the last year alone looks more like a public stock chart (with ups and downs) rather than one continuous decrease. Notice the spikes and declines of LGD online prices based on current evaluations from grading reports from IGI and GIA through StoneAlgo’s research and newly offered LGD price app. Graphic: StoneAlgo Look at the peaks and valleys shown in a LGS price chart offered by StoneAlgo. These prices feature online only LGD sales, but note the price variances aligned with carat weights and inventory. A complete analysis may be found at https://tinyurl.com/ LGDpricedrop and you can get up-to-the-second LGD prices (based on grading reports from GIA and IGI on StoneAlgo’s diamond price app: tinyurl.com/LGDpriceapp