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.
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.
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.
I think most of that perception comes from cultural depictions of jewel thieves. If you're stealing the diamonds, not paying for them, then they're a very concealable and conveniently value-dense. It doesn't matter to a jewel thief that the tiny little shard of shiny gravel was originally purchased for many thousands of dollars. What he cares about is he can hide it anywhere and get hundreds of dollars for it. Much better than stealing TVs.
> Also, deBeers invented the diamond wedding ring fairly recently.
The DeBeers campaign that boosted the already significant popularity of diamond engagement rings was in 1947. I don't think diamonds or other gemstones on wedding (as opposed to engagement) rings have ever been a major thing (though I'm sure some people do that.)
Tiffany, I think, did a big push a few decades before that did a lot for the popularity of diamond engagement rings among the middle class, and diamond engagement rings had been popular among the upper class since something like the Victorian era.
> 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.
Just make sure to pay your taxes and avoid decaf coffee, otherwise some college kid is going to buy one for you and install it in your basement porta-potty time machine.
I bought mine from therealreal.com. I got a lot more ring than I'd normally be able to afford, and it's an elegant design you don't see everywhere.
Check with the recipient beforehand, of course. You're not the one who has to wear it, and no amount of logic is going to change a mind that wants a brand new, natural diamond.
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?)
It is not so much that used diamonds are worth less (although they might decline in value without provenance to prove they are natural or if they are chipped) but the huge markup on retail jewellery. It's easy for any member of the public to buy and sell gold at close to market price, it's much harder with diamonds.
> It is not so much that used diamonds are worth less (although they might decline in value without provenance to prove they are natural or if they are chipped) but the huge markup on retail jewellery.
Precisely.
And on top of that some jewelry stores are worried that customers would consider a below wholesale offer to be insulting, so they often refuse to buy piece back at all.
Jewellery stores have started supplying certificates of pedigree with diamonds they sell. This helps to reassure the customer that the diamond is not second-hand.
You are obviously affected by this ailment called "science-based critical thinking". It is bad (for business) so you should consult an astrologist or a zen furniture arranger to seek remediation.
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...
> 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.
That makes it popular for a movie. It also means that most people didn't watch it, at least not in theaters. (I guess that would be true even for the most popular movie of all time. The most popular thing in some category is rarely more popular than the entire rest of the category combined.)
Even if every viewer paid $1, that would be 171 millions people, which really is not that much compared to even the population of North America and Europe combined.
Most people don't watch films in the theater run exclusively. It has been viewed by many hundreds of millions of people after it left the box office. Also, network effects account for a lot. One person seeing the film and talking about blood diamonds to their friends and family leads to 2 others who look into it, which leads to 4 more, etc. That's how ideas spread.
It does not exist in a vacuum. I am not even arguing that the movie was irrelevant, but it was not that huge a deal and it was not the only voice in the discussion. The point in the parent was that ethics was not a driver because there was no inflection point when the movie was released, which to me is fallacious.
He’s also just got his timing wrong. The movie came out when artificial diamonds were scarce and pricey. The technology accelerated after that, and the shifting mores could definitely have played a part.
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.
Diamond dust used to be the main industrial product. But as diamond synthesis has improved, cutting tools are now using larger diamonds.[1] This has been a big win for the well-drilling industry. Newer bits cut rock, and with diamond, they last long enough to get the job done. The classic Hughes tricone bit, the thing that looks like a set of bevel gears, is not a cutter. It's a rock crusher.[2] It cracks by compressive force.
(Patents were really strong back then. Howard Hughes, Sr. became the richest man in the world by buying the patent for the drill bit. He then manufactured bits and rented them out for a fraction of the profits from the oil well.)
It depends what you use it for. Abrasives can use pretty much any horrible misshapen brown rock of roughly the right size.
But there are also applications for larger flawless crystals in things like diamond windows, semiconductor substrate and microtomes. Recently you can even buy a diamond 3D printer nozzle for extruding abrasive materials like carbon fibre. These require better processes than the ones that churn out abrasive diamonds.
A rising tide lifts all boats. The demand for industrial diamonds is insatiable. And for bigger grits. This leads to people learning how to make bigger and stronger diamonds. Eventually some of the knowledge and tech will percolate to the jewelry side.
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.
"When a thing becomes affordable more people have access to it."
nods nods
So is our conclusion "People talk a big game but their morality clearly fails based on how the market has played out" or "People want things but the market has competing forces and sometimes takes a long time to find ways to provide people what they want?"
My rephrasing to your statement is "It took the mass market decades to figure out how to deliver consumers the solar/electric cars they wanted at a price they could afford."
Also, points in the general direction of the established energy providers I think these assholes had some incentive not to let the market get out from under them and make sure they were the ones who continued to profit from it.
> My rephrasing to your statement is "It took the mass market decades to figure out how to deliver consumers the solar/electric cars they wanted at a price they could afford."
Nicely stated. I like your style of debate / deliberation.
If that was true, you'd expect the younger professionals of today would have comparative amounts of wealth to the boomers when they were young professionals. It's absolutely not the case. Each generation is getting poorer and poorer as they hit the same benchmarks.
This tracks with broad trends of wealth inequality increasing as well.
So no, it's not just "they haven't accumulated yet", because it's not clear they will have the opportunity to do so.
Boomers had a lot more sibling and lot smaller inheritances coming to them. Kids these days will inherit a lot more and share a lot less with siblings.
> you'd expect the younger professionals of today would have comparative amounts of wealth to the boomers when they were young professionals. It's absolutely not the case
Source? The data I’ve seen indicate the median millennial is wealthier than the median boomer was at their age.
The point isn't comparing boomers and younger generations buying diamonds NOW, but when they marry. Boomers typically don't wait till they're 60 to get married.
Um, I'm going to go ahead and point out this, probably not super relevant data point
"While trailing Gen Xers for the beginning of their adult lives, younger American households’ average wealth began to exceed that of Gen Xers at about age 30, reflecting historically high wealth levels following the COVID-19 pandemic." I have a feeling that average wealth adjustment falls very heavily on the home owners, which is only just above half of all the cohort. Had a similar thing happened to boomers in 89, almost 70% would have benefitted.
I think it's also worth pointing out: The share of wealth held by boomers in 89 (why 89? Because they didn't have data before that. It's why the graphs start in a weird spot and why it's not a great study unless you're trying to pull out a "gotcha" stat) represented almost 20% of the total wealth in the country. "Millenials/GenZ" has a hold on only HALF that percentage.
Doctors may hate your one weird statistic, but socio-demographists probably don't...
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 ;)
Some of us old-heads got pushed much farther left as a result of this. I used to be a Democrat, blue and blue. These days I'm much more like, "The Dems will sell me out to make a buck, I gotta go out and actually be the change I want to see in the world."
Young folks who are experiencing disillusion -- don't give in to despair. You can make a meaningful difference in lives. Build communities, engage in mutual aid, whatever.
yeah, I was disillusioned with the establishment left, so I just looked for the non-establishment left (but not so non-establishment that they idolized the Soviets).
I never imagined I'd see a black president, same sex marriage, or cannabis legalization in my lifetime!
Now would be a terrible time to become disillusioned and despairing, after winning all those important battles. It proves that idealism works, and we really need it for current and future battles! It's the nihilistic disillusioned people who are CAUSING all the problems.
In so many aspects of life, I've noticed how there's always something devastatingly discouraging that happens right before any major successful breakthrough.
It's as if God's being a dick, and always throws something profoundly disheartening at you right on the precipice of success, just so he can laugh at you for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I now recognize that as a sign I'm just about to succeed, and shouldn't give up no matter what.
We are living through that kind of historic transition right now, watching MAGA finally turn on Trump. Don't fuck it up by giving up now!
Yes but you see, now we have a trans person in some sport somewhere who did kind of okay in a competition nobody cares about, and that undoes all the good. Unfortunately, we have to burn it all down and start over.
... or so populist messaging from the Right would have you believe.
Why would finding out that some scientific studies weren't done correctly change any person's views when this is always the case and no one has ever said otherwise?
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.
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
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.
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
Diamonds are quite possibly the only stone that isn't yet essentially 100% artificial. Rubies, the next hardest stone, is trivial to make artificially:
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.
Are they ditching diamonds because if fashion, or are they ditching diamonds like they’re ditching buying houses? I would bet affordability is more likely the cause of decline in younger people
Diamonds have absolutely catered in affordability in the last few years, so I think it's probably fashionable. I've seen more and more people say they want something different than a diamond ring and I think part of it is that they aren't worth multiples of any other ring anymore
The point is more that people would move to gemstones that don't look like diamonds, if diamonds start being perceived as cheap. Moissanite was popular because it's not immediately obvious it's not a diamond, while diamonds were popular.
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.
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.
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.
Because there is a century now of diamonds being associated with certain cultural elements in US life, and that's not easy to take away overnight. Lots of people expect a diamond ring as part of an engagement - not just the future bride, but their friends, family, co-workers. A sapphire ring or an opal ring or a ruby ring will not be easily accepted - it will be seen as weird, or cheap, or anti-traditional, etc.
Now sure, this concept was manufactured to a great extent through marketing, and it can be replaced or just fall out of favor. But established culture changes very slowly, and there's no "other gemstones cartel" to throw money at this the way DeBeers did to establish the diamond engagement ring in the first place.
> 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.
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.
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.
I have a diamond to sell her then. It a flawless synthetic diamond that has been hand curated. It’s a one of one. Therefore it is even more expensive than so called real diamonds
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).
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
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.
When discussing market shifts I think the relative nature of all these points needs to be considered. There will of course always be pockets of exceptions, but on a relative basis the prior comment is correct.
Getting married is less common which in of itself is a huge reduction to diamond jewelry demand. Of course there’s probably some town that marriage is at an all time high.
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?
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.
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.
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.
How do CZ gemstones compare to diamond gemstones visually/in person? It looks like CZ has a lower refraction index but higher color dispersion vs. diamond, so that seems like it would still result in an attractive gemstone. The main disadvantages seem to be slightly lower refractive index (so less internal reflection and brilliance?), lower hardness (disadvantage for the gem getting scratches - possible advantage for not scratching your sapphire glass watch or smartphone camera lens?!) and higher weight.
edit: seems that moissanite (silicon carbide, perhaps unsurprisingly) is another diamond-like (though hexagonal crystals vs. cubic for diamond or CZ) gemstone that is actually harder than sapphire and less prone to fracture than diamond.
To everyone except those with a trained eye, they're virtually indistinguishable; however, because CZ isn't as hard, they tend to scratch and dull over time and thus lose their luster.
If we're talking about 'quality', CZ just doesn't compare for longevity. That said, unless you're talking about a daily-wearing-for-many-years piece of jewelry (i.e., an engagement ring), CZ is just fine for most folks, especially considering the cost difference.
I remember watching a documentary about a man who would marry (multiple) women, then steal their money and leave.
one of the victims said she had doubted the ring he gave her was real, but he just scratched a mirror with it to prove it was real. Then she said "it was only later after he left that I found cz can also scratch glass"
>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.
i think you overlooked a general revulsion towards monopoly and therefore DeBeers, their laughable (though long effective) marketing, though agree it's mainly economic.
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.
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.
Those are very rare exceptions, and generally from people who already have enough money that it makes next to no difference what they buy. Or it's just performative, they're doing it for the sake of appearances.
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.