The natural diamond industry is getting rocked. Thank the lab-grown variety

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/lab-grown-diamonds-1.7592336

by geox • 12 months ago

297 370 12 months ago

jqpabc1239• 12 months ago

It's all just a crystalline form of carbon.

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"

close044• 12 months ago

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.

AnimalMuppet2• 12 months ago

I could see thinking about this differently.

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.

jqpabc1239• 12 months ago

I'd argue that a person obsessed with cost really isn't focused on what it represents.

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.

Incipient• 12 months ago

I'd disagree with that. The prospect of a natural diamond is that it's unique (I mean, not visibly I suppose) and millions of years old.

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...

whatevaa• 12 months ago

There is no "soul" in either pieces of rock.

jqpabc1239• 12 months ago

If you can't tell the difference by either looking or listening, I'd argue they both have a similar amount of "soul".

And thus, any distinction between them exists mainly in your head.

tehlike• 12 months ago

No one in the target audience cared about the age or the uniqueness as much as the size and the status it supposedly signals.

mc32• 12 months ago

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.

loloquwowndueo• 12 months ago

The atoms in the synthetic diamond are billions of years old as well.

CommieBobDole• 12 months ago

Every piece of gravel is unique and millions of years old, too.

nradov• 12 months ago

There's no such thing as "soul".

gooseus• 12 months ago

https://ia801604.us.archive.org/27/items/everything-is-bulls...

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.

rollcat2• 12 months ago

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.

These are not the same things.

kstrauser4• 12 months ago

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.

asadotzler• 12 months ago

I wanna only drink natural creek water with its natural biology and other "flaws" because, well, its natural and has a truly unique mix of critters and metals in it. Why would I want the same purified drinking water everyone else has. Natural creek water, unique and special, if unique and special were spelled g.i.a.r.d.i.a.

thrawa8387336• 12 months ago

LMAO diamonds have no soul...

dyauspitr2• 12 months ago

There is something to a rock being millions of years old, you’re not wrong.

cantor_S_drug8• 12 months ago

here is something there...

Indeed there is a diamond planet that old too.

A diamond planet, "55 Cancri E", is a super-Earth exoplanet known for its high density and potential diamond composition. It is located 41 light-years away and is about twice the size of Earth and nine times its mass. The planet's extreme heat and pressure are believed to have crystallized its carbon-rich composition into diamonds.

shvdle2• 12 months ago

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.

jqpabc1239• 12 months ago

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.

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.

mathiaspoint2• 12 months ago

It was never about the rocks. Like nearly everything else in the economy it's really about attention.

jqpabc1239• 12 months ago

The attention from a man made diamond is indistinguishable from a natural one to most people.

xhkkffbf3• 12 months ago

I've bought some lab created diamonds made with CVD. THey're great. If anything, they're too clear.

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.)

JKCalhoun• 12 months ago

Any reputable places to get them that you know of?

ooterness• 12 months ago

Like all other forms of carbon, diamonds will combust in the presence of oxygen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfa-cKDzYSg

dehrmann• 12 months ago

You can also use the resulting CO2 to do CO2 things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wvDwSnzcw

jxntb736• 12 months ago

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.

chasil• 12 months ago

Unfortunately, De Beers controls the natural diamond supply, and they leave much to be desired in corporate ethics.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers#Legal_issues

jxntb736• 12 months ago

And the US holds 50-70% of the total world market capitalization, and yet here we are.

Believe 15A and 19A as much as you can believe De Beers' 'Building Forever 2030 Goal's

K0balt4• 12 months ago

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.

jxntb736• 12 months ago

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.

probably_wrong• 12 months ago

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.

bloqs• 12 months ago

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.

dumbmrblah• 12 months ago

I’m curious, how old are you? Age range works.

The article emphasizes that this is a generational thing and I’m wondering which generation you fall into.

jxntb736• 12 months ago

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.

[Born during Clinton's first term]

kergonath5• 12 months ago

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.

Ekaros2• 12 months ago

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.

MITboy123• 12 months ago

"When you buy a natural diamond, you're also buying a risk of cancer and various diseases, because all natural diamonds contain trace amounts of thorium and uranium. This is due to the fact that diamond crystallization occurs deep within the Earth's mantle, where these radioactive elements are naturally present

Jedd2• 12 months ago

This story - Diamonds are Bullshit - comes up regularly, and I bookmarked it back in 2013 because it's so good.

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/ )

scoofy• 12 months ago

When I saw the headline I immediately thought: "couldn't have happened to nicer guys /s"

Why is it that everyone seems to have a soft spot for industries that have some kind of monopoly, suddenly losing that monopoly.

sorenjan• 12 months ago

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.

https://eutoday.net/antwerps-diamond-industry-facing-an-exis...

cut3• 12 months ago

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.

jxntb736• 12 months ago

A price appreciation of about 75% over roughly 20 years.

Jedd2• 12 months ago

The _new_ price has doubtless gone up, as inflationary valuation benefits to the manufacturer / vendors.

The resale value of your item has gone down.

aetherson• 12 months ago

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.

Here's an example article from the era: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2004/02/14/y...

Aurornis• 12 months ago

I second this. There was no way to get a real, flawless, 2 carat lab grown diamond at the time for $2K.

I hope the parent commenter wasn’t duped by someone selling fake diamonds.

hackingonempty• 12 months ago

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.

fallinghawks2• 12 months ago

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.

ginko• 12 months ago

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.

js8• 12 months ago

Isn't diamond too brittle for all these applications?

holowoodman2• 12 months ago

No. Less brittle than normal glass, but not as good as certain ceramics.

conductr3• 12 months ago

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.

aprilthird20212• 12 months ago

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

holowoodman2• 12 months ago

But as soon as that happens, other gemstones will come in cheaper artificial varieties as well.

spwa44• 12 months ago

Diamonds are quite possibly the only stone that isn't yet essentially 100% artificial. Rubies, the next hardest stone, is trivial to make artificially:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcdRQmQcHQ

BobAliceInATree3• 12 months ago

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.

lovich3• 12 months ago

Lab rubies, sapphires, emeralds and basically anything you can think of with a known chemical makeup is being produced en masse by factories all over India and China.

Here’s just one sellers assortment of various “roughs” https://www.gemsngems.com/product-category/rough-stones/lab-...

As someone who doesn’t care about the authenticity of the gems provenance and only about having consistent physical properties for rock tumbling and gem faceting, it’s been very nice for the budget

Spooky23• 12 months ago

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.

spwa44• 12 months ago

Seems to be the opposite ...

j455• 12 months ago

There were some pretty major articles in the past 20 years challenging the pr Cambodian that was diamonds.

The thing about today is many pale aren’t seater horse beliefs and preferences (“trends”) can be manufactured.

Social media is a different kind of amplifier the past few years.

kergonath5• 12 months ago

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.

throwaway2037• 12 months ago

Wiki says: "The film grossed $171 million worldwide and received five Oscar nominations..."

That is popular by any reasonable definition.

indymike4• 12 months ago

Just because demand did not follow a step function when the file was released does not imply that ethics are not relevant.

The movie exposed an opportunity - what if we could have diamonds without the oppression? Oppression is very high cost.

LightBug1• 12 months ago

Not necessarily.

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.

XorNot2• 12 months ago

Why would someone with ethical concerns still buy a diamond and not just choose another gemstone if somehow synthetic was more expensive?

And it's all marketing anyway: slap a "condensed from pure carbon" campaign out there and suddenly natural diamonds are fake rich and not as pure or precise or something.

jsbisviewtiful• 12 months ago

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.

snowwrestler2• 12 months ago

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.

inetknght• 12 months ago

Something had to start increasing the demand to enable that.

Diamonds are used in all kinds of things besides jewelry. Industry needs that economy of scale.

zahlman2• 12 months ago

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.

pengaru2• 12 months ago

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.

thfuran3• 12 months ago

Cubic zirconia isn't synthetic diamond at all.

mortos2• 12 months ago

You got good responses to the rest but

The adults around me couldn't explain scientifically what the actual difference was between a CZ and natural diamond.

I was told growing up you can just check with window glass. If the gem scratches it's CZ and if the glass scratches it's diamond.

CZ is very cheap costume jewelry and won't last as it scratches and dulls so easily

jterrys• 12 months ago

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

aerostable_slug• 12 months ago

Depends a lot on the demographic. It's still popular with young people who express status and success through culturally relevant jewelry styles (often influenced by hip-hop and sports culture).

It's more status-forward than authenticity-forward consumption, and many jewelers can assure you that it's very much still in vogue in some areas.

jjtheblunt• 12 months ago

i think you overlooked a general revulsion towards monopoly and therefore DeBeers, their laughable (though long effective) marketing, though agree it's mainly economic.

heavyset_go2• 12 months ago

I think it's a generational thing. Younger generations genuinely cared about the implicit exploitation and violence in the industry, older didn't.

See also: views on climate change, adoption of renewable energy, etc.

jonplackett• 12 months ago

It’s an interesting comparison though because equally solar / electric cars only really went mass market when they became economically a good deal

eastbound• 12 months ago

It’s not generations, it’s age ;) Younger generations are still idealists. With age, you get betrayed in your ideals. You discover scientific studies weren’t so scientific as they get turned over one by one. It’s something like: Ice caps will still melt, and everything you did for the better, bad luck, they’ll have increased the warming. Same when we tried to eat better against cancer or raised or fists to defend gay people. I don’t want you to believe you’re generation won’t suffer the same fate ;)

mensetmanusman5• 12 months ago

Younger generations have none percent of the wealth to make these decisions compared to the boomers.

j455• 12 months ago

Such topics were being taught since the 80s, maybe it takes time to teacher hold.

If ethical mining were an issue today would they lay down their devices that use critical minerals?

Solar energy was quite expensive until recently to improve adoption.

userbinator• 12 months ago

What I find most interesting is the weight put on the ethical side. I think it’s overstated.

Virtue-signaling has always been a thing, and apparently quite useful for marketing to certain segments of the population.

eddiewithzato2• 12 months ago

Nah it’s also environmentally, mining is bad. And if there is an alternative with no mining, people will opt for that.

stocksinsmocks• 12 months ago

It’s also worth noting that diamonds for jewelry have very little to no used market value or appreciation. Natural diamonds might be worth the premium if they could be a store of value like gold, but that isn’t the case. I think that is a clue to the absence of a fair market dynamic.

jfengel• 12 months ago

So if I wanted to get a used diamond on the cheap, where would I go? Estate sale? Pawn shop?

Perhaps to have a jeweller set it in a different setting?

herbst• 12 months ago

This! Buying expensive things can be fun and reasonable. But only if they have an actual worth and aren't just expensive for the sake of.

It's so weird a product marketet like this even got any popularity within "normal" people.

olalonde• 12 months ago

I think that is a clue to the absence of a fair market dynamic.

Also probably due in part to what's been called the best advertising slogan of the 20th century: "A Diamond is Forever" [0]. The implication being that you're not supposed to sell (or buy) a used diamond.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers#Marketing

ChrisMarshallNY2• 12 months ago

It’s really weird, how popular culture keeps using diamonds as (usually ill-gotten) currency. In reality, they are pretty terrible for the purpose, and I think most people are aware of that.

Buying diamonds has always been expensive, but selling them, is another matter, entirely.

Also, deBeers invented the diamond wedding ring fairly recently. My mother’s wedding ring was a big-ass sapphire. If you look at classical wedding rings, they are often non-diamond stones.

geokon• 12 months ago

im a bit confused ... how can most people know if the diamond has been "used"?

you typically buy jewelry with a diamond in it. the jewler could gave bought it new or pried it out of an old ring. How would you know ? (and why would anyone care?)

Workaccount2• 12 months ago

Just yesterday I was joking with friends that I wish I could give my soon to be fiancee a gold ring with a diamond shaped gold nugget in the setting as an engagement ring...

Night_Thastus2• 12 months ago

People love to claim the moral high ground, believing themselves so much better. So much more noble. So much smarter.

But at the end of the day, they always do the exact same thing - buy whatever is cheaper. Doesn't matter if it's produced with slave labor, or child labor, or the product of corporate government coups.

They put all that out of their mind, and just buy the product. They rationalize it or conveniently forget it or just pretend it doesn't apply to them. Whatever will get them past it.

A similar topic: Does anyone think things like solar and wind are being used out of the goodness of anyone's heart? Concern for the next generations? A desire to give clean air to our youth? Sympathy for sufferers of all of the horrible diseases and respiratory problems? Concern about lands lost to rising seas?

No. It's because they got cheaper than fossil fuels. Anything else is fantasy.

albumen• 12 months ago

You do realise there are different categories of users? There’s consistent evidence that early adopters and ethically motivated consumers accept price premiums to align purchases with values, identity, or status; only later—when technologies mature—do cost considerations dominate for mainstream buyers.

Solar PV: https://research.chalmers.se/publication/520553/file/520553_...

EVs: https://ia600108.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/24...

Renewable energy premiums: https://research-hub.nrel.gov/en/publications/will-consumers...

Fair Trade: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Shared%20Documents/conferences/2...

jMyles2• 12 months ago

What about the size of the market as a whole? Was there a drawdown during the period in question?

Is it possible that people decreased purchases of diamonds altogether in response to ethical qualms (in favor of other jewels or precious items), and then were later motivated by price to go with lab-grown diamonds?

apparent• 12 months ago

I think it reached a tipping point. It used to be that there wasn't much of a cost advantage, so people assumed you bought the real thing. Now that the lab-made diamonds are super cheap, many people will assume you bought one of those. When that's the case, people feel like they might as well buy the cheaper ones. It's like people buying natural mined diamonds are chumps. No one will know you spent more unless you talk about how it's natural (and that makes you annoying).

j455• 12 months ago

Strange, having been in the market for a diamond 10 y ago, I distinctly remember man made diamonds were noticeably cheaper.

I wonder if my spreadsheet still exists.

Also recent synthetic diamonds adding some kind of a marker to the synthetic diamond.

Today it makes one think there’s likely synthetic diamonds mixed in with real ones somewhere.

ghushn35• 12 months ago

I don't think those are orthogonal.

Natural diamonds are more expensive, and they therefore have a conspicuous consumption element to them. That could be valuable as a means to gain social cachet. Except you'd have to speak loudly about how they were natural.

And in doing so you are loudly proclaiming you don't care about human suffering it took to get the diamonds. That's probably fine in very wealthy circles, but in upper middle class/upper-upper middle class circles, it's likely quite gauche.

If the natural ones didn't have this faux pas attached to them by default, then they might carry more interest as a "I saved up for these" class indicator.

grues-dinner4• 12 months ago

have a conspicuous consumption element to them

I've never understood this really because no-one carries their GIA certificate with them. With the existence of moissanite and artificial stones, it should be a "market for lemons" situation where a given stone on someone's finger is assumed low-value by default.

lern_too_spel• 12 months ago

When the issue became big, the Blood Diamond movie, sales of lab grown did not markedly increase

Other people would still assume you might have bought a blood diamond, so instead of buying a lab diamond, I would expect these people to have bought another gem if they bought a gemstone at all.

SenHeng• 12 months ago

My then-gf (now wife) and I watched a movie together about an African man whose village got raided, him put into slavery to search for diamonds and his son becoming a child soldier by the same people and their struggles to get free, and finally pawn off a pink diamond to one of the largest diamond companies in London. At the end of it, she finally came to realise that the diamond trade was really quite shitty. And we had a long discussion about the whole thing, as well as the growth of the synthetic diamonds industry and how they’re much better on the supposed 4C properties as well as on price.

Yet in the end she still wanted to get a ring from one of the big names because that’s what she grew up with and what she had always dreamt of since young.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

conductr3• 12 months ago

My wife too. She’s a jewelery buyer for national retailer, she was well aware, even has visited mines and seen the conditions first hand, admitted how good lab grown was for ethics, etc. yet- her inner 5 year old princess wedding dream won her mind and she couldn’t envision anything other than a natural diamond for her wedding set.

Matthyze• 12 months ago

Similar story here. Goes to show how effective brainwashing kids as an advertisement technique is.

nautikos1• 12 months ago

So she wanted a real diamond because it's more expensive than a synthetic diamond.

The irony is that as synthetic diamonds become indistinguishable from naturals, the price will plummet over time.

npteljes2• 12 months ago

Ethics were not compelling enough for most people

This matches my experience with people, including myself. I think it's about the feedback. The price pain or the energy pain is readily and immediately felt, whereas ethics violations are not, as people are shielded from the impact externally, and have many defenses against it internally as well.

indymike4• 12 months ago

Even 29 years ago, my wife did not want a diamond because she didn't want a fruit of oppression, slavery and murder on her finger.

mattmaroon2• 12 months ago

Blood Diamond came out in 2006. Prices were not comparable at that point and they barely existed. The ethics could easily have played a strong part in driving the demand that evolved the technology to the point where it became affordable.

But in any case, these aren’t mutually exclusive. People want conflict free diamonds but not to spend a years pay getting one.

DonsDiscountGas2• 12 months ago

The quality of lab grown also improved a lot over that time

Henchman21• 12 months ago

Obligatory:

“Have you ever tried to sell a diamond” https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1982/02/249-2/132...

dang2• 12 months ago

Diamond threads are forever!

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)

gopkarthik• 12 months ago

Diamond threads are forever!

Haha, upvoted for this, if not for the effort :D

dang2• 12 months ago

Thanks for noticing my 6+ year old joke :)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

zahlman2• 12 months ago

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.

Okay; but why should I aesthetically prefer this?

kstrauser4• 12 months ago

Yep. In the context of what should be a very simple crystal structure, "complexity" is another word for "defect".

OJFord• 12 months ago

Exactly, at the same price yes the natural stone will have more 'complexity' and be lower-graded than the lab one as a result.

chihuahua• 12 months ago

For decades, the marketing message was that less defects = better = more expensive. Apparently, when lab-grown diamonds came along, that had to be inverted: now, lab-grown = less defects = "less character"

The whole thing is such an obvious marketing exercise with very little to back it up (as evidenced by the extremely low resale value of diamonds)

cubefox3• 12 months ago

Better question: Why should you aesthetically prefer a diamond to cheap glass?

masfuerte• 12 months ago

Because they don't look the same. Not even a little bit.

Glass doesn't sparkle.

function_seven2• 12 months ago

Diamonds sparkle a lot more brilliantly due to their high refractive index.

(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.

recipe19• 12 months ago

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...

philjohn• 12 months ago

Because the refractive index of diamond is higher than that of glass, which makes it look prettier and "sparkle".

grues-dinner4• 12 months ago

A chip of concrete has more "complexity" than any diamond. But somehow I bet Graham's wife isn't wearing a piece of Blue Circle's finest.

thfuran3• 12 months ago

Though it can look pretty neat of you polish it up and acid stain it.

mensetmanusman5• 12 months ago

It can result in interesting color centers.

margalabargala• 12 months ago

Which can be replicated cheaply in a lab, and will be the moment they become desirable.

gitremote• 12 months ago

He's an earth sciences geek, so he prefers natural diamonds' relationship with the earth. This aesthetic is irrelevant for most people.

ghushn35• 12 months ago

I have an outdoor fireplace filled with shattered tempered glass. It's like, rough, chunky glass pebbles.

It's much much more complex that a solid sheet of tempered glass, and it catches the light and reflects it in sparkling ways.

Maybe these so called "complex" diamonds create more interesting light interfaces?

monster_truck• 12 months ago

They don't.

If they did, it would be possible to detect the difference with perfect accuracy. Instead, the detectors made by those interested in pushing the concept of "real, natural" diamonds have a false positive rate of 5% looking for the inclusion of things labs could easily add if they cared to

jajko3• 12 months ago

If that's what you are after there are more interesting stones than diamonds for that, ie moissanite.

DonsDiscountGas2• 12 months ago

No reason, which is why he didn't offer one. But of course they have to have some pro mined diamond quote for "balance".

deadbabe• 12 months ago

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?

pkoird• 12 months ago

If the chemical composition is the same, yes.

owenversteeg4• 12 months ago

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.

ourmandave• 12 months ago

Calling them "lab-grown" is part of the propaganda against them.

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.

owenversteeg4• 12 months ago

Again, I'm all for lab grown diamonds for both consumer and industrial use.

I think "lab-grown" is a pretty neutral term, and it is also scientifically accurate in the case of CVD and other diamonds where the process really is "growing" the diamonds. There are certainly other terms for them that sound more derogatory such as "synthetic" or "artificial" diamond.

somebodythere• 12 months ago

Maybe it's my engineer-brain talking, but "lab-grown" actually biases me towards the diamonds. Feels precise and futuristic.

ryao• 12 months ago

I thought the process used to grow them in a lab was somewhat different than the process used in nature. Labs use Chemical Vapor Deposition while nature uses high pressure and high temperature. The lab grows the diamond crystal while nature squeezes a lump of carbon into one.

TrainedMonkey• 12 months ago

Synthetic diamonds definitely need a marketing glow up. Current names are man-made, lab grown, and synthetic diamonds. Instead we could lean into how cool the HPHT and CVD processes are and have - giga forged diamonds (gigapascal pressure of HPHT), plasma coalesced diamonds (CVD process), or even human forged diamonds (highlighting technological triumph required to achieve these).

BeetleB• 12 months ago

Calling them "lab-grown" is part of the propaganda against them.

Indeed: Even the article perpetuates this:

"Whereas a two-carat real diamond engagement ring might cost $35,000, Oymakas says a two-carat lab-grown diamond with the same clarity and colour could only be about $3,500."

Sorry - they're both real diamonds.

m4632• 12 months ago

Well it is common terminology to say "grow crystals".

cantor_S_drug8• 12 months ago

Lab-grown meat is not true meat. It doesn't matter people would be willing to put a lab-grown organ inside their body if saves life.

djoldman• 12 months ago

Is your company in abrasives or machining? I'm curious because I assume that lab-grown is actually preferred over mined because the crystalline structure may be more homogenous.

owenversteeg4• 12 months ago

I can't go into too much detail, but there are actually a few things: our main use is machining and one of our other uses is for the extreme thermal conductivity. Diamond is an incredible material period.

I am not an expert so take this with a grain of salt, but for what I do I have seen no difference between flawless natural diamond and flawless lab grown diamond, the difference is that the flawless natural diamonds are almost always far more expensive.

42772827• 12 months ago

That's just part and parcel of being human.

Also part and parcel of being a human being is logic and empathy. Anyone who possesses one of these traits, never mind both of them, should find it easy to choose the product that isn't literally the product of human suffering an exploitation.

owenversteeg4• 12 months ago

Blood diamonds are terrible, but the overwhelming majority of diamonds produced these days are not blood diamonds relying on slave labor, they're mass-mined products relying on colossal-scale industrial machinery. That's why Russia is #1 and Canada is #3 in worldwide diamond production today: even the world's largest diamond mines have 1-3k employees vs. massive production.

That's not to paper over the issues with the industry (environmental, poor working conditions, poor pay etc) - but those are more generally applied to any mined product. I'd be willing to bet that your average set of modern electronics cause far more suffering than your average diamond: see conflict resources such as tantalum, tin, tungsten, gold.

heresie-dabord• 12 months ago

wanting a mined diamond. The whole idea behind a diamond engagement ring is a marketing exercise backed up by a cartel,
That's just part and parcel of being human.

Yes, but what kind of human?

mark-r• 12 months ago

Isn't industrial diamond use already a lot higher than jewelry use? It seems unlikely that consumers switching to lab-grown would "drive volume up and prices down" in any meaningful way - except perhaps for the jewelry grade stones themselves.

chipsa• 12 months ago

That includes stuff like diamond grit. You don’t care about the color or clarity of grit. Tenth of a carat on up? You care about that for jewelry use. And that translates into better non-grit industrial diamonds as well.

thehappypm2• 12 months ago

In my opinion, diamonds really are the best jewel for a engagement ring. They are really the only gem that will really never chip, fade, or cloud over time. Alternatives like moissanite are great, don’t get me wrong, but they’re just not quite as good on the longevity scale. When you buy someone a diamond, they could literally do zero maintenance on it and 100 years later they still have a diamond that looks basically exactly the same.

BobAliceInATree3• 12 months ago

Diamonds definitely chip.

milchek• 12 months ago

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...

BobAliceInATree3• 12 months ago

Synthetic diamonds are so cheap now that even de Beers closed their online store.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonydemarco/2025/05/09/de-be...

ridgeguy2• 12 months ago

Two points just FYI in thinking about the sudden shift to synthetic diamonds from natural stones:

• Scale: I'm aware of one company that operates over 700 CVD systems that each make 25 stones/run - there are at least 3 others of similar volume;

• Cost: the variable cost of making a 1ct finished brilliant (D-E,F-VVSI) is <$30US. Obviously, that cost is for ex-US production. See, for example, the recent demise of de Beers' Lightbox growth center in Oregon.

Naturals simply can't compete. They are forming a completely separate market involving a much smaller, extremely wealthy clientele.

The business case for synthetics is deteriorating as production costs bottom out and margins decline in an ongoing race to the bottom.

wonderwonder3• 12 months ago

I have a visceral hatred for the diamond industry, and its based on nothing except my shock at how expensive a shiny rock is and the effectiveness of the advertising campaign around them. I remember going to buy my wife an engagement ring and just being incredulous at the price. I completely understand supply and demand but a lot of the supply limitation is artificial. Its one of the few things I am emotional about, I simply loath the diamond industry and the entire sham that you have to spend x number of months salary on a rock to prove to the world that you love someone. They built such an incredible narrative where people would judge each other based on the size of a rock or that it had to be of X clarity or you had to spend so much to prove whatever.

To this day I change the channel when I hear a commercial for a diamond store on the radio and its been 20+ years. I am so excited about lab grown diamonds.

Liftyee3• 12 months ago

Personally felt this too, though I think I hate dishonest marketers and adversarial business-customer relations more broadly.

For some reason my ideal vision of capitalism is where a company simply makes a product that solves customers' problem and makes them happy, receiving a fair amount of money in return for their efforts. No corporate propaganda campaigns or anti-consumer shenanigans needed, just a solid [thing] for people who need [thing].

Interested to hear potential problems with this approach in the replies.

wonderwonder3• 12 months ago

I think that what you have described for the most part is just basic capitalism which I agree with as generally competitors drive prices down. The diamond industry has some how been allowed to conspire to artificially limit supply and raise prices to a level even the oil industry has not been able to achieve.

xbmcuser• 12 months ago

Like most good things happening in the world now days this is also because of China they were not under the same de beers marketing magic rest of the world was once the Chinese abandoned mined diamonds prices have catered.

Btw Blood diamonds was also a successful marketing ploy of De beers to keep out the competition. It was weird to me how western countries only cared about the exploitation of diamonds.

throwpoaster• 12 months ago

Extraction of natural diamonds can fund development of some of the poorest communities in the world. [0]

As the jewelry industry repositions around the uniqueness of natural diamonds I would expect to see more promotion of this kind of socially responsible production.

[0] https://peacediamond.com/

eddiewithzato2• 12 months ago

So can many other dangerous and environmentally exploited industries. Doesn’t mean it’s a good thing

akomtu• 12 months ago

Diamonds are simply NFTs of the real life: worthless coupons that only prove that you've wasted a few tens of thousand dollars. They prove your social status. The battle for purity or the origin is a distraction. For the same reason, diamonds as a gift make sense only if they are expensive.

Liftyee3• 12 months ago

Agree, though it should be noted that diamonds are far from the only things like this - other questionably useful social status symbols include "luxury" fashion (low quality made in low wage countries...), or even just having the latest iPhone

Animats3• 12 months ago

The diamond industry got into this mess by insisting that the best diamonds were "flawless". This put them into competition with the semiconductor materials industry, which routinely manufactures crystals with lattice defect levels well below anything seen in natural diamonds. The best synthetic diamonds now have below 1 part per billion atoms in the wrong place.[1] Those are for radiation detectors, quantum electronics, and such. Nobody needs a jewel that flawless.

De Beers tried to squelch the first US startup to turn out gemstones in production by intimidating the founder. The founder was a retired US Army brigadier general (2 silver stars earned in combat) and wasn't intimidated. That was back in 2011, and since then it's been all downhill for natural diamonds.

De Beers later tried building synthetic diamond detectors. There are simple detectors for detecting cubic zirconia and such, but separating synthetic and natural diamonds is tough. The current approach is to hit the diamond with a burst of UV, turn off the UV and then capture an image. The spectrum of the afterglow indicates impurities in the diamond. The latest De Beers testing machine [2] is looking for nitrogen atoms embedded in the diamond, which is seen more in natural diamonds than synthetics. The synthetics are better than the naturals. Presumably synthetic manufacturers could add some nitrogen if they wanted to bother. This is the latest De Beers machine in their losing battle against synthetics. They've had DiamondScan, DiamondView, DiamondSure, SynthDetect, and now DiamondProof. Even the most elaborate devices have a false alarm rate of about 5%.[3]

[1] https://e6-prd-cdn-01.azureedge.net/mediacontainer/medialibr...

[2] https://verification.debeersgroup.com/instrument/diamondproo...

[3] https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/A...

Onavo• 12 months ago

I just found my new AI startup idea.

cwmoore4• 12 months ago

How do you intend to obtain data?

jppope• 12 months ago

who was the retired US Army brigadier general?

nkurz• 12 months ago

I don't know anything about the industry, but I thought it would be a good test for the state of AI. I put Animats' comment and your question into DeepSeek R1 and it said (I think correctly) that the company was Gemesis and the retiree was Carter Clarke Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemesis.

throwaway81523• 12 months ago

Carter Clarke. See this article: https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/

Muromec5• 12 months ago

De Beers tried to squelch the first US startup to turn out gemstones in production by intimidating the founder. The founder was a retired US Army brigadier general (2 silver stars earned in combat) and wasn't intimidated.

Hahaha, this is amazing. All of the US ex-military I worked with was super chill but had zero tolerance for bullshit, I can't even imagine somebody trying to pull it off and thinking it's a good idea.

indymike4• 12 months ago

You'd be surprised how few people even read a resume before turning to intimidation - legal, physical, political or otherwise. It's amazing how often managers think they can bully someone, and then find out that their opponent discovered kryptonite a long time ago.

Animats3• 12 months ago

Here's the story, from Wired, back in 2003.[1]

[1] https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/

kevin_thibedeau• 12 months ago

The nice thing about the DeBeers machines is that they will confirm you have a genuine synthetic diamond.

ta988• 12 months ago

The blood detector.

MengerSponge• 12 months ago

Nitrogen Vacancy (diamond) magnetometers are a relatively recent development. As I understand it, the substrate is typically formed via ion bombardment of synthetic diamonds

jajko3• 12 months ago

Good, de beers is highly amoral business and there is no way around it. Blood diamonds and lies around them, artificially elevating diamond prices, making up the classic PR campaign that somehow inserted equation wedding=big diamond into minds of mostly US population for few generations.

When I see somebody with diamonds and check with them that they are naturals, its pretty clear what kind of person I am dealing with. To be kind and polite here, its not a nice evaluation and it ends up very precise. I let them know what's the general consensus on morality regarding those stones, its sometimes funny to watch their reactions and at least now they know something and can't anymore argue they didn't. What they do with that info is up to them.

cantor_S_drug8• 12 months ago

China and Africa are destroying the DeBeers diamond cartel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tGZzwe4mQ

PS Question : Who is stealing the content idea from whom? Is it possible that the article author saw this video and decided to write abou it?

cultofmetatron• 12 months ago

I wonder where these diamonds are laundered. probably some country with a comparatively high gdp that is a big time diamond exporter despite having zero diamond mines I imagine.

thebrain• 12 months ago

I do the same thing with friends who use IP TV that gets it's from a friend of a friend of a friend.

doctorpangloss• 12 months ago

I’m pretty sure the death knell for the industry is changing tastes. Who is going to innovate in marketing?

Certainly this is an approach, get a bunch of nerds engaged with the product, co opted into marketing it. You’re quite literally storytelling. But something tells me that “CTO” is not the fashion industry’s most lucrative demo. And for better or worse, no matter how you’re making you’re diamond, you’re focusing on 18-45yo rich women seeking experiences, and I don’t see how the diamond’s origin, even if everything you say is 100% true, factors into the retail journey at Tiffany’s.

bigyabai• 12 months ago

Like the parent comment says, there will still be demand for high-quality diamonds whether or not they're considered a luxury. It's more that the marginal utility of a diamond has plummeted, compared to cheaper and easily mass-produced iPhones or Labubu dolls. Hardly surprising that diamonds are unpopular to a generation of Americans who are overwhelmingly unlikely to ever own a house.

It's not the 1950s anymore, and blue-collar workers don't want to piss away 3 months salary to buy a depreciating asset. It's really only marketable if you lie to the customer.

bbor• 12 months ago

All right on, but your comment reminded me that they are innovating in the marketing space, or at least trying — last spring, they ran a sizeable ad campaign on Reddit for https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/natural-diamond-types-and-al...

As someone who’s already cynical about the ”natural”(/extractive) diamond “industry”(/cartel), the points made on that site are hilarious and absurd — highly recommend a scroll for anyone interested in how desperate they are to attack the new tech. Just from that comparison page, my favorite argument is probably “lab grown diamonds are from (dirty, evil) India and China, whereas natural diamonds are from ~nature~”, although “lab grown diamonds are so perfect that they’re all the same grade, and therefore boring” is a close runner up.

The fact that they’re now publishing a magazine devoted entirely to this topic tells me they haven’t slowed down, just improved their ad spend so that it’s not wasted on me! Something tells me there’s quite a mountain of financial instruments secured by the warehouses of diamonds they have to keep supply tight, so I can only see this ramping up in the short term.

amy_petrik• 12 months ago

The death knell for the industry is the redefinition of the unit of American society.

The unit at the time of DaBeers smashing 1947 "Diamonds are Forever" campaign, in 1947, was the -family-. It wasn't too long after women's suffrage, and still women were expected to be barefoot and pregnant, after all, birth control wouldn't come for another 20 years. Families were the operative entity messaging targeted, and the campaign was successful because the diamond was a sort of foundation for the foundation of the family, the marriage, not dissimilar in spirit from long held human societal norms of dowries and such.

The sexual and hippie revolution of the 1960s shook the whole thing up. Women didn't need families, there was birth control, women could work, a revolution carrying forth to the 1980s shark killer business woman to today where in fact many universities have become female majority. The modern unit of american society is the individual, not the unit, making the diamond an anachronistic echo of a once proud culture, now seen as a bit dated, a bit weird, a bit unsettling and paternalistic, instilling the same feelings in a person that an old Playboy magazine might.

szszrk• 12 months ago

Do I understand that correctly: "natural diamond" businesses pushed hype towards purity of their product, yet now they can only prove it's and actual natural diamond by confirming it's much less pure than their "competitors"?

Amusing.

colonial• 12 months ago

Quoting myself from elsewhere, but I would like to make a legislation proposal: all natural gems must be marketed as "crude" due to impurities not present in their synthetic counterparts.

This would end the De Beers cartel basically overnight by smashing the "appeal to nature" fallacy that "natural gem" marketing and pricing relies on.

chemmail• 12 months ago

Pretty effing hilarious the argument your diamond is worth less because it isn't full flaws and defects.

fnord77• 12 months ago

When can we have diamond windows ?

ethan_smith• 12 months ago

Diamond windows already exist for specialized applications like infrared optics and high-pressure research, but widespread consumer use remains limited by manufacturing costs and brittleness despite lab-grown diamonds reducing prices.

KolmogorovComp• 12 months ago

Thanks GPT

ReptileMan2• 12 months ago

I love synthetic diamonds. The whole investment in chasing big diamonds thing let to the situation where diamond grit abrasive right now is extremely cheap for the quality and quantity of abrasion you get. Up to the point where full size homemade casted diamond whetstones are a thing. For under 100$

sgt1012• 12 months ago

Interestingly it's been possible to make rubies for years, 150 years ago rubies were far more prized than diamonds, but then fell out of fashion, mostly because diamonds were in good supply and there was a big marketing campaign for them. Consequently lab grown rubies are pretty cheap - maybe $50 carat, but here's the thing.. natural rubies are still expensive because they are rare and contain impurities that give them a glow/fire that is prized.

But here's the fun thing. You can destroy the value of a natural ruby by cooking it. If you heat it in the right way the impurities will anneal out and you will be left with a near flawless stone that appears to be artificial! Bye bye value :)

liampulles• 12 months ago

The ethics of participating economically in blood diamonds is one thing - the other side of it is millions of couples who have been socially pressured for generations into putting good money into a massively depreciating asset. I hope that declines.

jajko3• 12 months ago

Not sure where you live, but that social pressure was/is very soft in Europe. Absolutely nothing happens if there is no diamond, its just people self-pressing themselves in some variant of childhood-like mentality and competitiveness. In my family line, nobody ever bought anything like that.

For any man, for past few decades (at least 3-4) a woman insisting at all costs on big shiny natural diamond is a massive red flag for undesirable personality traits. Given stable divorce rates and general misery on all sides before and after that red flags are and should be considered very intensively. Once physical attraction wanes, only personalities remain.

wink• 12 months ago

I am constantly wondering if we're just the outliers here in my German city (I don't think I know anyone who has ever mentioned a diamond ring in my presence, no matter which generation) or if it's just an American thing. Also I couldn't tell you if we're talking 1,000 USD or 20,000 USD :P

alberth• 12 months ago

Is this really De Beers’ own doing?

Think about it like a supermarket—at scale, it’s not practical for grocery stores to source fruits and vegetables from the wild (like natural diamonds).

Wasn’t it inevitable that “farm-grown” produce (lab-grown diamonds) would become the long-term solution?

__turbobrew__• 12 months ago

My wife wanted diamond earrings. I could get flawless lab-grown diamonds for 1/10 the cost of natural diamonds. Furthermore lab-grown diamonds are not discernible from natural diamonds, so there really is no reason to get a natural diamond unless you care about providence.

1659447091• 12 months ago

If any one is really set on having a natural diamond, I highly recommend taking a trip to Crater of Diamonds State Park[0], in the middle of nowhere -- I mean, Murfreesboro, Arkansas.

Pay an entrance fee and bring or rent your own equipment and keep any diamonds you find. It's a 37 acre field that was once a volcanic crater. I never found any personally, but it was surprisingly fun and worth the detour if driving through the state. I also don't care much for diamonds, but if I ever find one it'd be pretty special. More than 600 diamonds are found each year according to wiki

[0] https://www.arkansasstateparks.com/parks/crater-diamonds-sta...

MITboy123• 12 months ago

"Trace amounts of thorium and uranium enter natural diamonds during crystallisation process also emit gamma radiation, which can lead to various diseases and chronic health conditions such as thyroid disorders, blood diseases, cancer, and neurological problems."

MITboy123• 12 months ago

When you buy a natural diamond, you're also buying a risk of cancer and various diseases, because all natural diamonds contain trace amounts of thorium and uranium. This is due to the fact that diamond crystallization occurs deep within the Earth's mantle, where these radioactive elements are naturally present

defrost• 12 months ago

Trace amounts of thorium and uranium are literally everywhere on the land surface of the planet.

This is moot sans the "source that you quoted" and some stats and studies.

For interest, Australia: https://www.ga.gov.au/bigobj/GA13928.pdf

India, Mali, Fiji, Africa, Americas, etc have similar trace amounts across their surfaces that are detectable from an aircraft 80m above ground level traveling at 70 m/second.

"Radiation: it's everywhere"

The natural diamond industry is getting rocked. Thank the lab-grown variety

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