My company buys a lot of diamonds - for industrial use, not jewelry related :) The falling price of synthetic diamonds has been a huge boon. Several processes I do right now would be impractical without the use of "low-cost" diamonds - air quotes because they are still not exactly cheap. So it is obviously in my interest for consumers to switch to lab-grown diamonds and thus drive volume up and prices down.
At the same time, I do understand the sentiment around wanting a mined diamond. The whole idea behind a diamond engagement ring is a marketing exercise backed up by a cartel, so if you're gonna participate in the ritual you might as well do it right. There are silly backstories buried in every part of human society today, from "some king did it and everyone copied him" to "this piece of land got special status a thousand years ago which accidentally let it become its own country" to "my grandmother was too poor to do XYZ the right way so we still do it her way." That's just part and parcel of being human.
As it should, diamonds were made artificially scarce and controlled by monopoly:
“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…”
From the classic 80s article “Have you ever tried to sell a diamond” - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
My wife is in the retail side of this market and I’ve had a lot of second hand familiarity with the transition to lab grown.
What I find most interesting is the weight put on the ethical side. I think it’s overstated. When the issue became big, the Blood Diamond movie, sales of lab grown did not markedly increase. It took another decade or so to become more prevalent. What changed over that time is the price, IIRC the price was comparable to natural at the time the movie came out. Ethics were not compelling enough for most people at that price. When prices got about 50% of natural, it became much more compelling. Now that it’s around 10%, it’s practically so compelling that buying natural isn’t even a real consideration for many people.
Anyways, I think people use the Blood Diamond talking point as a socially acceptable reason- it’s what they tell their parents and grandparents who might judge them- but in reality it’s almost completely a financial decision. If the tables were turned and natural diamonds became 1/10th the cost of lab grown, the market would completely flip back practically overnight.
But one big reason lab-grown diamonds are so much less expensive now is economy of scale. Something had to start increasing the demand to enable that. Especially considering the large marketing investment against lab-grown gems by established players, trying to make them seem “tacky.” The ethical issues have been a very capable counter-message to that.
> Something had to start increasing the demand to enable that.
Yes — industry. From Wikipedia:
> Eighty percent of mined diamonds (equal to about 135,000,000 carats (27,000 kg) annually) are unsuitable for use as gemstones and are used industrially.[131] In addition to mined diamonds, synthetic diamonds found industrial applications almost immediately after their invention in the 1950s; in 2014, 4,500,000,000 carats (900,000 kg) of synthetic diamonds were produced, 90% of which were produced in China. Approximately 90% of diamond grinding grit is currently of synthetic origin.[132]
> ...
> Industrial use of diamonds has historically been associated with their hardness, which makes diamond the ideal material for cutting and grinding tools. As the hardest known naturally occurring material, diamond can be used to polish, cut, or wear away any material, including other diamonds. Common industrial applications of this property include diamond-tipped drill bits and saws, and the use of diamond powder as an abrasive.
The process to produce industrial diamonds (essentially, very hard dust) does not meaningfully help scale the process to produce first-quality synthetic diamond gems for jewelry.
As your quote points out, synthetic industrial diamonds have been available for many decades. But it is only recently that synthetic diamond gems have achieved popularity and price advantage for jewelry.
> What I find most interesting is the weight put on the ethical side. I think it’s overstated. When the issue became big, the Blood Diamond movie, sales of lab grown did not markedly increase.
It was not a switch that was pushed the moment the movie went out. In the grand scheme of things, the movie was not even that popular. But there definitely was a realisation that diamond prices were completely artificially inflated by an oligopoly, and that there were many issues with how they were sourced.
Just because demand did not follow a step function when the file was released does not imply that ethics are not relevant.
Years and years of “diamonds suck” make a mark. It’s an evergreen topic online for a long time, and the people looking at engagement rings in 2025 have been aware of the shittiness of the diamond business for years.
The mining, corrupt trade practices, etc are all well known and sometimes subject to enforcement action.
More people have caught on to the many terrible things about natural diamonds over time and now we are finally at the tipping point for lab grown to dismantle the unethical natural diamond trade. The idea of lab grown needed time to gestate with the public, which has been manipulated for decades about the “value” of natural diamonds. Even when lab grown became a thing, the natural diamond trade did its damnedest to manipulate the public on the quality of lab grown vs natural. Coincidentally, natural diamonds are overvalued due to decades of market manipulation by a monopoly.
What you're seeing in the drop of value of diamonds also reflects the general shift in tastes of different generations with income. I'm a person that likes to go to flea markets and antique stores on the rare occasion and the value of the same items on the market has drastically shifted in the last 10 years as boomers are no longer in the collectible age bracket. Younger people don't really care about Tiffany jewelry
i think you overlooked a general revulsion towards monopoly and therefore DeBeers, their laughable (though long effective) marketing, though agree it's mainly economic.
When I was a kid in the 80s my mother worked at a jewelry store and CZ diamonds were already considered cheap fakes at the time. The price was not comparable to the real deal because nobody was buying them at diamond prices.
They were simply dismissed as more trash belonging in the gold-plated case. It's hard to appreciate how much less informed people were back then - we're talking pre-internet. The adults around me couldn't explain scientifically what the actual difference was between a CZ and natural diamond. Just one was a fake, held little value, and was a sure way to lose your fiance.
I actually predict in a few years it will become more fashionable to wear other jewels over diamonds given the rate the prices are crashing at. When diamonds are competitive with all the other gemstones, people start looking at those the same way too
You're a few years too late, as this trend has been been happening for a decade at this point. You can find many articles online about how millenialls and now gen-z are ditching diamonds.
Diamonds are quite possibly the only stone that isn't yet essentially 100% artificial. Rubies, the next hardest stone, is trivial to make artificially:
When prices are equal, I'd wager the decision is: "if prices are equal why wouldn't I buy the "real" thing? I'll just try and justify to myself that it's sourced correctly".
When the price of the grown diamonds falls, the decision might be: "Ok, so grown diamonds are cheaper AND more ethical? Ok, I'm definitely buying grown".
If the ethics factor didn't exist, "real" diamonds would still retain the kudos and still be valued highly over "nice but fake" diamonds.
It's the ethics factor that pushes the decision over the line.
As an n=1 economic animal, that's what my behaviour would have been anyway.
> But some experts stress there is still a difference.
> Graham Pearson, professor with the University of Alberta's department of earth and atmospheric sciences, says that the natural formation of diamonds deep underground results in a "complexity" you can't get with the lab-grown variety.
You can make some plausible arguments against glass. It scratches more easily and doesn't shimmer as much. But synthetic sapphire is the same league and costs a lot less.
The modern-day aesthetic of diamonds is just that they are expensive. They're not distinguished by utility, quality, or appearance from cheaper products. The ultimate status symbol, but also obviously a bit of an issue...
OK, but there's a real difference. My wedding band has small diamonds in it, and occasionally I'll be sitting inside where the sun falls on my hand and casts a million pretty blue and white and red sparkles on the walls and ceiling of the room I'm in.
Diamonds (and other gems) really are beautifula to look at in ways that glass just isn't. And manmade ones, sparklier still out of the forge of our own cleverness, are much nicer in my opinion.
> I'd say it's like AI music or art - something made by a machine, for some reason, just doesn't have any "soul" to it.
Diamonds are a product of natural geological processes. (Or, are grown in a lab, by recreating similar conditions.)
Music and art are products of human talent, skill, and labor - that ML companies have used (without a license, permission, or even credit) to build datasets that are now being used to make money, at the expense of these artists.
Indeed. The oldest things on earth are the hydrogen atoms. Literally all of them were formed in the first 3 minutes after the big bang. So all of them have the same age, billions of years old, down to a few seconds difference at most.
> The oldest things on earth are the hydrogen atoms. Literally all of them were formed in the first 3 minutes after the big bang.
Stable hydrogen wasn't able to form until several hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang when the universe cooled sufficiently for electrons to bind to protons.
Even assuming you're counting lone protons as hydrogen atoms, it's still absolutely false. I don't know if that's true for the majority of protons in the universe, but there are mechanisms by which new protons are made all the time. Neutrons can turn into protons through beta decay, and high energy particle interactions like those involving cosmic rays can produce brand new protons. These processes can and do happen terrestrially.
> the amount of non-big-bang hydrogen is not even a trillionth of a trillionth of the total.
I didn't say it was a huge fraction of the total. You said "literally all of them" were from the Big Bang, which is just wrong. Plenty of other processes produce protons/hydrogen
The difference is that there's a detectable difference between AI and human made art, at least today. The only detectable difference between a correctly-made lab diamond and one clawed out of the ground by children is that the latter will have flaws. I'm sure you could engineer similar flaws into the lab version if became fashionable.
The difference is instantly apparent under UV - most lab grown diamonds will not fluoresce unless they have a bad growth process that leaves flux and other impurities in the crystal.
Natural diamonds won't always fluoresce but the ones that do will do so in a variety of colors, and sometimes change depending on what wavelength is irradiating them.
The difference is not instantly apparent under UV.
Only about 30% of natural diamonds have fluorescence --- which is *caused* by impurities and imperfections in the material.
Manmade diamonds tend to lack this because they have fewer impurities and imperfections. Equating increased perfection and purity with inferiority is highly debatable and smacks of marketing BS.
> We exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process because the
diamond company De Beers decided in 1938 that it would like us to. Prior to a
stunningly successful marketing campaign, Americans occasionally
exchanged engagement rings, but it wasn’t pervasive. Not only is the demand
for diamonds a marketing invention, but diamonds aren’t actually that rare.
Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers kept the price of a
diamond high.
Imho, that "soul" you describe is an artifact of human sentimentality and a very successful marketing campaign by a bunch of Afrikaner colonialists.
I agree. Kind of like factory vases vs hand thrown or glass blown vases. They’re practically the same but some people will pay lots more for certain hand made ones.
I’m not sure diamonds are popular because of what they are but what they represent.
Every gem out there is “the crystalline form” of something. Diamonds are (were?) the expensive crystalline form. And plenty of people equate “expensive” with love, or care, or respect. Even if the same people would never be able to tell the difference between diamond and cubic zirconium, knowing it’s the cheap one makes it less valuable in other ways. This depends on the person, of course.
If it’s not diamonds it will have to be something else that shows “I put my money where my mouth is”. A simple metal wedding band is the same wherever it’s made but a famous jeweler will charge an arm and a leg more than your local shop for the same amount of precious metal, same effort, and same result. And yet Tiffany’s isn’t going out of business for the same reason. It’s what it represents.
I am curious to see if tastes or fashion shift towards other rarer or more expensive gems not yet manufactured cheaply en masse.
The entire point of using diamonds in wedding rings is for the male to signal how committed he is to the marriage by expending a large amount of money on both the ring and the wedding itself. It then acts as a way for the wife to signal her status to other women by showing off how much her husband was willing and able to spend on the ring.
It is a hold-out from the tradition that the male is a provider and the female is a caregiver. If you reject traditional gender roles, you should also reject expensive diamond rings regardless whether they are mined or grown. Otherwise, embrace the shiny, but make no mistake: the cost is entirely the point.
>The entire point of using diamonds in wedding rings is for the male to signal how committed he is to the marriage by expending a large amount of money on both the ring and the wedding itself. It then acts as a way for the wife to signal her status to other women by showing off how much her husband was willing and able to spend on the ring.
That's some nice historical background (which could be post-hoc contextualization that fits certain agenda), but traditions have this weird habit of outliving their actual purpose and still having the form without the role.
So no, you don't have to commit to traditional gender roles to have diamond rings and don't have to make them expensive as otherwise it's not doing the thing it's supposed to do. The could just not do the thing at all and you can still have them.
The more rational decision, IMO, assuming you still want to signal wealth, is to buy neither, collude with your supposed life partner, buy a gigantic, flawless moissanite that you both agree to say is a natural diamond that cost 50k. Then secretly put the money you didn't spend on sparkling carbon into some appreciating asset. Rivals are still sick with envy, you have a fun joint venture bamboozle to laugh about, and the mortgage gets paid off a few years early.
For anyone appreciating expensive things, giving diamonds represent the willingness to fulfill that desire. It’s easy to conflate that with love, at least for a while, even when you aren’t a materialistic person.
Jewelry is the pinnacle of “just monetary value”. Unlike almost any other possession, a car, a house, clothes, etc. jewelry serves no practical purpose, only shows the willingness or ability to spend for it. The more you spend, the more valuable the gesture, the more you cared to please the recipient.
Materialistic people have the same feelings you have. Those just happened to be triggered by different values than yours.
The other purpose of jewerly is looking nice. That's difficult to comprehend, but it's the actual important thing for people who's most expensive piece of everyday wear isn't their phone.
As people quit believing in God, they stop thinking in terms of "God brought us together/we were made for each other" (though they stop thinking that a generation or two later than they stop believing in God).
If you think that we made this relationship, then maybe a lab-grown (human made) diamond fits? (Though it may take an advertising campaign before people see it that way.)
Disclaimer: I'm not a sociologist. This is just my speculation about how the dynamic could change.
The entire point of a diamond is that it’s expensive. People buy them for status. Otherwise there are lots of gems that are much more prettier, but they are not as expensive. It’s like saying people will stop buying branded clothes because unbranded clothes have the same or even a higher quality for a fraction of the price. Kinda misses the point.
You miss the point. The only reason to buy a diamond is that it is expensive. It doesn’t matter if you could buy the same thing cheaper. It doesn’t matter that there are better gems that are cheaper. You buy the diamond to show that you can afford it. You buy someone a diamond to prove how much they are worth to you.
Yes, you can buy a man-made diamond the same you can buy counterfeit branded clothes. That only shows that you’re tasteless and that you can’t afford the real thing.
If you like, I will sell you a personally autographed photo of me. All for $1m cash. That's much more expensive than a diamond. Anyone who buys this for their new wife will prove that he REALLY loves her. $1m>>$35000.
If it is strictly about the money, a larger man made diamond can easily cost just as much as a smaller natural one --- while instantly conveying to the untrained eye the appearance of being more expensive.
Apparently there's a big issue in Antwerp now that they're not allowed to import diamonds from Russia. Maybe they should stop fighting the synthetic diamonds and embrace them instead, as something guaranteed free of human suffering and war profiteering. But the whole industry hinges on manufactured demand, so they'd rather see the trade move to other countries I guess.
Ive been seeing this same type of article for decades now. I bought a 2 karrat flawless lab grown diamond in 2005 for around $2k, and according to this article that size sells for $3,500. Prices have increased it seems. I assumed they would drop as more were made.
You shouldn't have gotten a 2 carat diamond that cheap at that time. Either you got a really great deal for some idiosyncratic reason or your recollection is off.
Inflation is probably why the number is higher now.
A year ago I picked up a 1ct hearts and arrows (D/E. VVS1/2, IGI certificate) from AliExpress for $360. I can see the hearts and arrows and it tests as diamond. A few months later an article came out about how lab diamonds stack up against mined, and the author had also bought one with similar characteristics from AliExpress for even less.
I just checked the same store and they're (not H&A but same other stats) running around $125 plus a $14 tariff.
According to the inflation calculator at bls.gov, $2000 in June 2005 has the same buying power as $3,317 in June 2025. So in real terms the price is about the same.
Diamonds need to become even cheaper. I want phone screens and glasses made out of single sheets of diamond. I want heatsinks and kitchen knives made out of the stuff.
If you pulled a diamond from the diamond rains on Neptune and brought it to Earth, you’re telling me it should be worth the same as a shitty lab grown?
I'm still conflicted about this. I understand the cost and blood diamond debate and largely agree. But there is something about diamonds that makes them divine: carbon atoms crystallizing and bonding over millions to billions of years to form structures, rated on a scale of color, clarity, cut, and weight. It's like gold, primarily forged in cosmic events like supernova explosions. Naaaaah let's just make it in a lab it looks the same.
People are being priced out of art and beauty and it's a shame economics and corruption make real diamonds dirty.
> But there is something about diamonds that makes them divine: carbon atoms crystallizing and bonding over millions to billions of years to form structures
It does not take millions of years to form a diamond. It takes hours. The million years are atoms sitting around doing nothing before that, and then diamonds sitting around doing nothing while some of them are eventually pushed to the surface.
You can say the same thing about any mineral. There is nothing special about carbon or the diamond structure. If anything, zircons are much more significant, being the oldest minerals we can find.
> rated on a scale of color, clarity, cut, and weight.
This is nothing special. The colour of lab-grown stones can be varied almost at will, and the rest is still an issue with synthetic stones.
> Naaaaah let's just make it in a lab it looks the same.
That’s the thing, though: it does (yes, some synthetic stones have specific defects related to how they were made and they tent to be too perfect if anything, but they still have the exact same property). It’s like complaining that the meat you are eating comes from a farm instead of being hunted.
> People are being priced out of art and beauty and it's a shame economics and corruption make real diamonds dirty.
Quite the contrary. Gemstones become more accessible to more people. The diamond industry made its bed, being completely corrupted from extraction to distribution. When stones are cheap we can have discussion about their beauty instead of their prices.
I'm all in for finding beauty in our daily lives, but I'm not sure diamonds are more special than other things we take for granted. Oil and helium have also taken millions of years to form, and yet no one spends a second before buying a plastic duck or inflating a balloon. And if the point is that diamonds are shiny and pretty (which is a fair reason for liking them) there are other types of stones around just as good.
It’s not just that, the economics of diamonds is completely fabricated. Idk about these days, but debeers used to buy up the vast majority of mined diamond, not to sell but to hoard or destroy them to maintain scarcity.
I’m not even sure that all of these recent stories about lab created diamonds to come out aren’t actually a PR pitch to advertise “natural” diamonds, an effort to emphasise the difference in the public psyche.
Anything public facing that positions diamonds as expensive, desirable, or valuable can usually be traced back to the cartel. It’s super common in movies and other media.
I'm not excusing nor rationalizing prices and the economics, obviously they hoard and manupulate the rates. Can't argue with how dark that crap must be. All I'm saying is real diamonds are 'better' and everyone knows it. Humans are emotional and that's a good thing. The manipulation of it is the bad thing. Trying to deny yourself of your emotions like a monk and yet still wishing for the iconic symbolic significance having 3month salary storybook ring, what are we doing here. Pay more for the real thing because life is real.
100percent on board. A marriage is only as meaningful as the vows and the integrity of the people that made them. The guests are there to witness and to celebrate. Trying to make it about anything else only cheapens it.
If you can, put enough gold on her to get her out of a jam and have some runway. Other than that it’s just the promises you keep.
No, that’s what the subcutaneous tracking chip is for. lol.
But seriously, for us it matters, since she is much younger than I am. We make an effort to signal that we are a committed couple so that people don’t make crass assumptions.
Still, my ring is tungsten carbide and hers is a family wedding band handed down in my family for generations. Our engagement ring was also a family heirloom. In that way the rings have meaning.
She likes to wear her ring because she feels like it is a symbol of belonging, and I wear mine to honor our relationship.
To us, the rings are symbolic of our vows, a gentle reminder that our lives are in service of one another.
> real diamonds are 'better' and everyone knows it.
Personally disagree. That whole "3 months' salary that will last forever" thing? A lab diamond will last just as forever as a mined one. I'd personally rather have one from a lab than one dug out of the earth by some African dude who spends his days sweating underground.
Yeah, idk. I’m not against the idea of a 3 month value reserve as a financial security token to de-risk a marriage proposal, but it should be something that can be liquidated for a similar value. Just setting 3 months of your work on fire is a really stupid and irresponsible move for most people, and their kids are ultimately the ones that suffer.
Not only that, imagine this scenario: something terrible happens. Your wife has to sell her jewelry to take care of herself and your child. Would you rather have bought her a $20000 ring that can maybe be sold for $3000? Or a ring with actual intrinsic value that might actually be worth more than what you paid, but at least fetch 80%.
When I think of how that would feel for her to know that I paid a foolish amount for something of inflated symbolic bling rather than a something of value, I get embarrassed just imagining it. To me that is an abdication of duty.
That’s the difference between diamonds and actual precious stones, or at lower price points a nice heavy gold ring with an inexpensive, lab grown gem.
For beauty, silicon carbide beats diamond hands down. If you want value and natural origins, a quality ruby or emerald is spectacular and actually rare and rationally market-priced. Gold is nice.
Until you get into very large and actually rare stones, diamonds are a scam, pure and simple. The value of a near flawless 1 carat stone at the mine is about two hundred dollars. Cutting costs about half that. To buy it, that stone might fetch $7000. To sell it, you might get $1000 if you’re lucky. That is not a store of value. It’s a symbol of gullibility or a boast that I have so much money that I can burn it without being irresponsible. The kind of boast that if you can’t back it up IRl makes you impossible to take seriously.
If you just really, really like diamonds, knock yourself out. But don’t delude yourself into believing they are valuable. Better yet, go get one yourself, smuggled out of a mine or otherwise at the source. Get it cut and polished, or better yet do it yourself. That I totally respect and has character, integrity, and value baked in.
As for status or something like that, I suppose there is a case to be made that it symbolizes a burnt offering. So that makes sense, but only against a backdrop of demonstrative excess. If you have a diamond ring and a loan of any kind that is anything other than strategic tax planning, that means your kids are worse off for your vanity. If you’ve got more money than god and you want to show that you can waste cash and it doesn’t matter, wear that ring studded with sub-museum grade diamonds a all day long, you’re making your point. It’s vulgar, but you’re making your point. I can see it. It’s like the track suit.
Otherwise, you may as well lace up your clown shoes.
But, that’s just my opinion. In all reality it’s a useful social signal, like certain religious expression.
If the value is in perfection. Why would I not pick one that is bigger, has less flaws and less impurities. It is like would I prefer natural rain water or artificially purified water without microplastics and pfas and so on... My pick should be clear.
The article emphasizes financial pressures on new couples due to rising living costs making lab-grown diamonds more appealing, and that's sad in my mind, it's sad that the cost of living prices people out from nice things, it's sad that people here are coping saying lab made are the same, which to me is like saying a veggie patty is the same as a beef and I'm a bad person for eating meat, that a knockoff purse is the same as the brand name because they are both leather; dematerialize and dissasociate from the world more why dont you, oh are you above consumerism and so romantic you could wear a string as a wedding band because its more about meaning. What's the point of any fashion then. Of any art if any paint will do. Gold is just metal too then.
there are many naturally occuring objects that have a similarly dramatic timeline
the point is that westerners are completely drunk on the marketing from de beers and its cost lives, not to mention the disgusting machiavellian exploitation of what was once an innocent courtship gesture into an aggressive commercial enterprise, chiefly profiteering the hopelessly young and naive.
At the same time, I do understand the sentiment around wanting a mined diamond. The whole idea behind a diamond engagement ring is a marketing exercise backed up by a cartel, so if you're gonna participate in the ritual you might as well do it right. There are silly backstories buried in every part of human society today, from "some king did it and everyone copied him" to "this piece of land got special status a thousand years ago which accidentally let it become its own country" to "my grandmother was too poor to do XYZ the right way so we still do it her way." That's just part and parcel of being human.
Like they're alive or there's some weird chemicals involved.
It's not silly stories when evil corporations with deep pockets are outright lying, like ads with doctors smoking.
“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…” From the classic 80s article “Have you ever tried to sell a diamond” - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
What I find most interesting is the weight put on the ethical side. I think it’s overstated. When the issue became big, the Blood Diamond movie, sales of lab grown did not markedly increase. It took another decade or so to become more prevalent. What changed over that time is the price, IIRC the price was comparable to natural at the time the movie came out. Ethics were not compelling enough for most people at that price. When prices got about 50% of natural, it became much more compelling. Now that it’s around 10%, it’s practically so compelling that buying natural isn’t even a real consideration for many people.
Anyways, I think people use the Blood Diamond talking point as a socially acceptable reason- it’s what they tell their parents and grandparents who might judge them- but in reality it’s almost completely a financial decision. If the tables were turned and natural diamonds became 1/10th the cost of lab grown, the market would completely flip back practically overnight.
See also: views on climate change, adoption of renewable energy, etc.
Yes — industry. From Wikipedia:
> Eighty percent of mined diamonds (equal to about 135,000,000 carats (27,000 kg) annually) are unsuitable for use as gemstones and are used industrially.[131] In addition to mined diamonds, synthetic diamonds found industrial applications almost immediately after their invention in the 1950s; in 2014, 4,500,000,000 carats (900,000 kg) of synthetic diamonds were produced, 90% of which were produced in China. Approximately 90% of diamond grinding grit is currently of synthetic origin.[132]
> ...
> Industrial use of diamonds has historically been associated with their hardness, which makes diamond the ideal material for cutting and grinding tools. As the hardest known naturally occurring material, diamond can be used to polish, cut, or wear away any material, including other diamonds. Common industrial applications of this property include diamond-tipped drill bits and saws, and the use of diamond powder as an abrasive.
As your quote points out, synthetic industrial diamonds have been available for many decades. But it is only recently that synthetic diamond gems have achieved popularity and price advantage for jewelry.
Diamonds are used in all kinds of things besides jewelry. Industry needs that economy of scale.
It was not a switch that was pushed the moment the movie went out. In the grand scheme of things, the movie was not even that popular. But there definitely was a realisation that diamond prices were completely artificially inflated by an oligopoly, and that there were many issues with how they were sourced.
Just because demand did not follow a step function when the file was released does not imply that ethics are not relevant.
The mining, corrupt trade practices, etc are all well known and sometimes subject to enforcement action.
They were simply dismissed as more trash belonging in the gold-plated case. It's hard to appreciate how much less informed people were back then - we're talking pre-internet. The adults around me couldn't explain scientifically what the actual difference was between a CZ and natural diamond. Just one was a fake, held little value, and was a sure way to lose your fiance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcdRQmQcHQ
When prices are equal, I'd wager the decision is: "if prices are equal why wouldn't I buy the "real" thing? I'll just try and justify to myself that it's sourced correctly".
When the price of the grown diamonds falls, the decision might be: "Ok, so grown diamonds are cheaper AND more ethical? Ok, I'm definitely buying grown".
If the ethics factor didn't exist, "real" diamonds would still retain the kudos and still be valued highly over "nice but fake" diamonds.
It's the ethics factor that pushes the decision over the line.
As an n=1 economic animal, that's what my behaviour would have been anyway.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonydemarco/2025/05/09/de-be...
> Graham Pearson, professor with the University of Alberta's department of earth and atmospheric sciences, says that the natural formation of diamonds deep underground results in a "complexity" you can't get with the lab-grown variety.
Okay; but why should I aesthetically prefer this?
(Moissanite is even better, so it should be preferred over diamonds unless I’m overlooking some other difference in their attributes?)
But plain glass gems look comparatively bland when used as jewelry.
The modern-day aesthetic of diamonds is just that they are expensive. They're not distinguished by utility, quality, or appearance from cheaper products. The ultimate status symbol, but also obviously a bit of an issue...
Glass doesn't sparkle.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Miluxas-Women-s-Glitter-Tennis-Sn...
Diamonds (and other gems) really are beautifula to look at in ways that glass just isn't. And manmade ones, sparklier still out of the forge of our own cleverness, are much nicer in my opinion.
Regardless of how it was made, one is just as much "forever" as the other. The real major difference is in the labor practices being used.
De Beers had a good run as a cartel but as they say, "the jig is up"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfa-cKDzYSg
I'd say it's like AI music or art - something made by a machine, for some reason, just doesn't have any "soul" to it.
I'm not actually entirely convinced in my argument, but there is something there...
Diamonds are a product of natural geological processes. (Or, are grown in a lab, by recreating similar conditions.)
Music and art are products of human talent, skill, and labor - that ML companies have used (without a license, permission, or even credit) to build datasets that are now being used to make money, at the expense of these artists.
These are not the same things.
Stable hydrogen wasn't able to form until several hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang when the universe cooled sufficiently for electrons to bind to protons.
Even assuming you're counting lone protons as hydrogen atoms, it's still absolutely false. I don't know if that's true for the majority of protons in the universe, but there are mechanisms by which new protons are made all the time. Neutrons can turn into protons through beta decay, and high energy particle interactions like those involving cosmic rays can produce brand new protons. These processes can and do happen terrestrially.
... and at rates that mean that the amount of non-big-bang hydrogen is not even a trillionth of a trillionth of the total.
I didn't say it was a huge fraction of the total. You said "literally all of them" were from the Big Bang, which is just wrong. Plenty of other processes produce protons/hydrogen
https://ai-art-turing-test.com/
And thus, any distinction between them exists mainly in your head.
Natural diamonds won't always fluoresce but the ones that do will do so in a variety of colors, and sometimes change depending on what wavelength is irradiating them.
The difference is not instantly apparent under UV.
Only about 30% of natural diamonds have fluorescence --- which is *caused* by impurities and imperfections in the material.
Manmade diamonds tend to lack this because they have fewer impurities and imperfections. Equating increased perfection and purity with inferiority is highly debatable and smacks of marketing BS.
> We exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process because the diamond company De Beers decided in 1938 that it would like us to. Prior to a stunningly successful marketing campaign, Americans occasionally exchanged engagement rings, but it wasn’t pervasive. Not only is the demand for diamonds a marketing invention, but diamonds aren’t actually that rare. Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers kept the price of a diamond high.
Imho, that "soul" you describe is an artifact of human sentimentality and a very successful marketing campaign by a bunch of Afrikaner colonialists.
I recommend to all newly engaged couples to buy them and save the money for more important things like raising children or buying a home.
And if you look on eBay, you can get CVD diamonds for even less. (At a bit of a risk, of course.)
Every gem out there is “the crystalline form” of something. Diamonds are (were?) the expensive crystalline form. And plenty of people equate “expensive” with love, or care, or respect. Even if the same people would never be able to tell the difference between diamond and cubic zirconium, knowing it’s the cheap one makes it less valuable in other ways. This depends on the person, of course.
If it’s not diamonds it will have to be something else that shows “I put my money where my mouth is”. A simple metal wedding band is the same wherever it’s made but a famous jeweler will charge an arm and a leg more than your local shop for the same amount of precious metal, same effort, and same result. And yet Tiffany’s isn’t going out of business for the same reason. It’s what it represents.
I am curious to see if tastes or fashion shift towards other rarer or more expensive gems not yet manufactured cheaply en masse.
For those obsessed with materialism, real satisfaction is out of reach. There is always bigger, better and more expensive.
Personally, I would tend to reconsider any long term relationship with such a person.
The entire point of using diamonds in wedding rings is for the male to signal how committed he is to the marriage by expending a large amount of money on both the ring and the wedding itself. It then acts as a way for the wife to signal her status to other women by showing off how much her husband was willing and able to spend on the ring.
It is a hold-out from the tradition that the male is a provider and the female is a caregiver. If you reject traditional gender roles, you should also reject expensive diamond rings regardless whether they are mined or grown. Otherwise, embrace the shiny, but make no mistake: the cost is entirely the point.
That's some nice historical background (which could be post-hoc contextualization that fits certain agenda), but traditions have this weird habit of outliving their actual purpose and still having the form without the role.
So no, you don't have to commit to traditional gender roles to have diamond rings and don't have to make them expensive as otherwise it's not doing the thing it's supposed to do. The could just not do the thing at all and you can still have them.
Assume you have 2 diamonds that cost the same.
One is natural, the other is larger and man made.
Which one is more likely to convey your point to the average person?
Jewelry is the pinnacle of “just monetary value”. Unlike almost any other possession, a car, a house, clothes, etc. jewelry serves no practical purpose, only shows the willingness or ability to spend for it. The more you spend, the more valuable the gesture, the more you cared to please the recipient.
Materialistic people have the same feelings you have. Those just happened to be triggered by different values than yours.
As people quit believing in God, they stop thinking in terms of "God brought us together/we were made for each other" (though they stop thinking that a generation or two later than they stop believing in God).
If you think that we made this relationship, then maybe a lab-grown (human made) diamond fits? (Though it may take an advertising campaign before people see it that way.)
Disclaimer: I'm not a sociologist. This is just my speculation about how the dynamic could change.
People buy inferior, counterfeit merchandise all the time because they can't tell the difference.
But there is nothing inferior or counterfeit about a manmade diamond. It is *exactly* the same material as a natural one.
Yes, you can buy a man-made diamond the same you can buy counterfeit branded clothes. That only shows that you’re tasteless and that you can’t afford the real thing.
If it is strictly about the money, a larger man made diamond can easily cost just as much as a smaller natural one --- while instantly conveying to the untrained eye the appearance of being more expensive.
https://eutoday.net/antwerps-diamond-industry-facing-an-exis...
“Have you ever tried to sell a diamond” https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1982/02/249-2/132...
Here's an example article from the era: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2004/02/14/y...
I hope the parent commenter wasn’t duped by someone selling fake diamonds.
A year ago I picked up a 1ct hearts and arrows (D/E. VVS1/2, IGI certificate) from AliExpress for $360. I can see the hearts and arrows and it tests as diamond. A few months later an article came out about how lab diamonds stack up against mined, and the author had also bought one with similar characteristics from AliExpress for even less.
I just checked the same store and they're (not H&A but same other stats) running around $125 plus a $14 tariff.
The resale value of your item has gone down.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403988
There is nothing to miss about the impending death of the 'diamond industry'.
(Oh, the link is broken on the HN 2013 story -- try this one: https://priceonomics.com/diamonds-are-bullshit/ )
Why is it that everyone seems to have a soft spot for industries that have some kind of monopoly, suddenly losing that monopoly.
Natural Diamonds Had a Rough Year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42592424 - Jan 2025 (6 comments)
See how a lab-grown diamond is made - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42257245 - Nov 2024 (49 comments)
Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41488353 - Sept 2024 (490 comments)
Diamond industry 'in trouble' as lab-grown gemstones tank prices further - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40585594 - June 2024 (39 comments)
UK mining giant to offload De Beers diamond business - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40359867 - May 2024 (7 comments)
Forget billions of years: Researchers have grown diamonds in just 150 minutes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40172784 - April 2024 (61 comments)
Lab Grown Diamonds Are Too Perfect for Their Own Good - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39298644 - Feb 2024 (1 comment)
Diamonds Suck - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38247300 - Nov 2023 (163 comments)
The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38245762 - Nov 2023 (588 comments)
Diamonds are losing their allure - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37508058 - Sept 2023 (128 comments)
Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37396372 - Sept 2023 (11 comments)
What's the case for naturally mined diamonds anymore? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37275308 - Aug 2023 (49 comments)
Man-made diamonds are falling in price and appealing to more people - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35748205 - April 2023 (9 comments)
Diamonds Suck (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26698511 - April 2021 (53 comments)
Diamonds aren’t special and neither is love - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25978139 - Jan 2021 (90 comments)
Artificial diamonds creation process generating lonsdaleite - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25158428 - Nov 2020 (61 comments)
Diamonds Are Bullshit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25059605 - Nov 2020 (27 comments)
Billions of dollars of unsold diamonds are piling up around the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502201 - June 2020 (104 comments)
Shaking Up the Diamond Industry - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209364 - Feb 2020 (120 comments)
Diamonds Keep Getting Cheaper - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21522898 - Nov 2019 (389 comments)
Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818618 - Aug 2019 (237 comments)
The Elite Club That Rules the Diamond World Is Starting to Crack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20555503 - July 2019 (200 comments)
Would You Pay $32,709 for a Lab-Grown Diamond? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19287565 - March 2019 (34 comments)
Diamonds Suck (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17186457 - May 2018 (215 comments)
Diamonds Are Bullshit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17184539 - May 2018 (45 comments)
De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17183603 - May 2018 (439 comments)
Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16551147 - March 2018 (301 comments)
Lab-Grown Diamonds Come into Their Own - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085273 - Dec 2016 (103 comments)
Diamonds Suck (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464 - Nov 2016 (576 comments)
A Lab-Grown Diamond Is Forever - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11903409 - June 2016 (106 comments)
What the diamond industry is really selling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11099809 - Feb 2016 (83 comments)
Diamonds Suck (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10834567 - Jan 2016 (2 comments)
Diamonds are Bullshit (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9251952 - March 2015 (75 comments)
A Diamond Market No Longer Controlled By De Beers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7793386 - May 2014 (111 comments)
When Diamonds Are Dirt Cheap, Will They Still Dazzle? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7615712 - April 2014 (70 comments)
Diamonds Suck - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6868968 - Dec 2013 (3 comments)
Diamonds Are Bullshit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6331565 - Sept 2013 (8 comments)
Diamonds Are Bullshit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403988 - March 2013 (734 comments)
Ask HN: How have HN readers bought diamond engagement rings? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4971735 - Dec 2012 (25 comments)
Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535611 - Sept 2012 (225 comments)
Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405698 - June 2010 (85 comments)
Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283 - Feb 2010 (76 comments)
The Facts About Diamonds (and why I don’t like De Beers) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1109318 - Feb 2010 (41 comments)
De Beers profits fall 92% - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=722115 - July 2009 (25 comments)
Diamonds on Demand - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=330749 - Oct 2008 (16 comments)
People are being priced out of art and beauty and it's a shame economics and corruption make real diamonds dirty.
It does not take millions of years to form a diamond. It takes hours. The million years are atoms sitting around doing nothing before that, and then diamonds sitting around doing nothing while some of them are eventually pushed to the surface.
You can say the same thing about any mineral. There is nothing special about carbon or the diamond structure. If anything, zircons are much more significant, being the oldest minerals we can find.
> rated on a scale of color, clarity, cut, and weight.
This is nothing special. The colour of lab-grown stones can be varied almost at will, and the rest is still an issue with synthetic stones.
> Naaaaah let's just make it in a lab it looks the same.
That’s the thing, though: it does (yes, some synthetic stones have specific defects related to how they were made and they tent to be too perfect if anything, but they still have the exact same property). It’s like complaining that the meat you are eating comes from a farm instead of being hunted.
> People are being priced out of art and beauty and it's a shame economics and corruption make real diamonds dirty.
Quite the contrary. Gemstones become more accessible to more people. The diamond industry made its bed, being completely corrupted from extraction to distribution. When stones are cheap we can have discussion about their beauty instead of their prices.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers#Legal_issues
Believe 15A and 19A as much as you can believe De Beers' 'Building Forever 2030 Goal's
I’m not even sure that all of these recent stories about lab created diamonds to come out aren’t actually a PR pitch to advertise “natural” diamonds, an effort to emphasise the difference in the public psyche.
Anything public facing that positions diamonds as expensive, desirable, or valuable can usually be traced back to the cartel. It’s super common in movies and other media.
If you can, put enough gold on her to get her out of a jam and have some runway. Other than that it’s just the promises you keep.
But seriously, for us it matters, since she is much younger than I am. We make an effort to signal that we are a committed couple so that people don’t make crass assumptions.
Still, my ring is tungsten carbide and hers is a family wedding band handed down in my family for generations. Our engagement ring was also a family heirloom. In that way the rings have meaning.
She likes to wear her ring because she feels like it is a symbol of belonging, and I wear mine to honor our relationship.
To us, the rings are symbolic of our vows, a gentle reminder that our lives are in service of one another.
Personally disagree. That whole "3 months' salary that will last forever" thing? A lab diamond will last just as forever as a mined one. I'd personally rather have one from a lab than one dug out of the earth by some African dude who spends his days sweating underground.
Not only that, imagine this scenario: something terrible happens. Your wife has to sell her jewelry to take care of herself and your child. Would you rather have bought her a $20000 ring that can maybe be sold for $3000? Or a ring with actual intrinsic value that might actually be worth more than what you paid, but at least fetch 80%.
When I think of how that would feel for her to know that I paid a foolish amount for something of inflated symbolic bling rather than a something of value, I get embarrassed just imagining it. To me that is an abdication of duty.
That’s the difference between diamonds and actual precious stones, or at lower price points a nice heavy gold ring with an inexpensive, lab grown gem.
For beauty, silicon carbide beats diamond hands down. If you want value and natural origins, a quality ruby or emerald is spectacular and actually rare and rationally market-priced. Gold is nice.
Until you get into very large and actually rare stones, diamonds are a scam, pure and simple. The value of a near flawless 1 carat stone at the mine is about two hundred dollars. Cutting costs about half that. To buy it, that stone might fetch $7000. To sell it, you might get $1000 if you’re lucky. That is not a store of value. It’s a symbol of gullibility or a boast that I have so much money that I can burn it without being irresponsible. The kind of boast that if you can’t back it up IRl makes you impossible to take seriously.
If you just really, really like diamonds, knock yourself out. But don’t delude yourself into believing they are valuable. Better yet, go get one yourself, smuggled out of a mine or otherwise at the source. Get it cut and polished, or better yet do it yourself. That I totally respect and has character, integrity, and value baked in.
As for status or something like that, I suppose there is a case to be made that it symbolizes a burnt offering. So that makes sense, but only against a backdrop of demonstrative excess. If you have a diamond ring and a loan of any kind that is anything other than strategic tax planning, that means your kids are worse off for your vanity. If you’ve got more money than god and you want to show that you can waste cash and it doesn’t matter, wear that ring studded with sub-museum grade diamonds a all day long, you’re making your point. It’s vulgar, but you’re making your point. I can see it. It’s like the track suit.
Otherwise, you may as well lace up your clown shoes.
But, that’s just my opinion. In all reality it’s a useful social signal, like certain religious expression.
The article emphasizes that this is a generational thing and I’m wondering which generation you fall into.
[Born during Clinton's first term]
the point is that westerners are completely drunk on the marketing from de beers and its cost lives, not to mention the disgusting machiavellian exploitation of what was once an innocent courtship gesture into an aggressive commercial enterprise, chiefly profiteering the hopelessly young and naive.