http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/russian-asteroid-crater-revealed-filled-over-1-quadrillion-013025163.html?_esi=1

Call it the Soviet Union's most valuable cold war secret. This past weekend, Russia declassified the existence of what could very well be the richest diamond field in existence, located in the depths of a 62-mile diameter asteroid crater known as Popigai Astroblem in Siberia...

The market value for diamonds would drop considerably if these were made available for sale...so it would probaly end up being a few billion dollars worth. Still pretty good though

If I were them I would've slowly doled them onto the market so as not to cause the market price to collapse...

I have a small feeling the price of diamonds will go down a lot if Russia ever decides to try selling. You should put the amount of diamonds instead of their price prior to discovery.

De Beers will have their say in the matter. I wish I paid more attention in my Resource class a few years back, but I'm pretty sure anything that involves diamonds, the cartel, De Beers calls dibs on all discovered diamonds.

Except these are lower class diamonds not what would be used for commercial sale.

vladimir putin will have a lot of bling

Those will be hold and sold at a steady low pace to keep value high there in the stars.

The great majority of diamonds mined are destined for industrial use already anyways. Most likely the article mentioned it as a disclaimer for those believing the russians have an endless suply of jewels at hand.

Still this could be an extremely powerful economic weapon. Full-scale mining could make a market worth billions collapse. Hey, it could end the blood diamond conflicts in Africa.

Diamonds are a rip off and are very common in reality. De Bears (spelling?) controls the market and simply doesn't allow them to become common at retail. Additionally a very large segment go to Israel for cutting, so I simply don't buy them anyways.