Diamonds are among the most ancient, alien substances on the planet. They’re older than dinosaurs, older than plants. Diamonds were born back when the world resembled Mordor: a collection of angry volcanos, spewing gases and minerals into an atmosphere filled with lightning and methane clouds. Bits of carbon were trapped deep in the Earth’s mantle, then subjected to billions of years of unimaginable heat and pressure. This process transformed them into one of the hardest known substances — and one of the most precious. All the gem-quality diamonds ever found would fit inside a double-decker bus.
At least, they would have 20 years ago. These days, you can grow one in about a week, for the price of a breakfast burrito.
“I’ll show you what scares the diamond industry,” says Edahn Golan, co-founder of Tenoris LLC, a jewelry industry consulting and data analytics company. “When I meet with these executives, and they ask me, ‘How far can the price of diamonds fall?’ I show them this.” He gestures toward his laptop screen, which displays a walmart.com listing for a pair of half-carat diamond studs about the size of two lentils. Price: $12.
Companies whose diamond supply relies on digging are putting on a brave face. “If people can buy a pair of $12 lab-grown diamond earrings from Walmart, I feel nothing but delight,” says Al Cook, chief executive officer of De Beers Group. “It means you can buy something that looks beautiful for a very low price. I applaud Walmart. That has very little to do with our business.”
Fascinating read. Thanks for the link!
My experience with diamonds is limited. I grew up in the '80s, so I of course remember the ubiquitous DeBeers ads with everything in silhouette except the ring.
By the time engagement sauntered my way for the first time, it was totally unplanned. My girlfriend had moved in after the end of the academic year, though functionally living with me for months before that (turns out the dorms suck as a freshman at 21), and one Saturday morning in September, I took a shower and on returning to the bedroom asked if we were headed toward marriage.
“I guess so.”
“Does that mean we’re engaged?”
“I suppose it does.”
So we decided apparently the order of the day is finding engagement rings. Both of us being oblivious to fashion, we set out on this journey with bleached hair of the same length, matching shirts and matching pants.
“Oh, twins!” someone remarked passing us on the street downtown.
Now, don’t get me wrong, at this point, we’re both giddy. We’d not so much ever discussed marriage, and neither of us was big on the institution, and yet, here we are.
First off, jewelry stores find this to be an odd situation. “We’re looking for each others’ engagement rings” was weird in 2005, I guess. The first two places we went were keen on … things neither of us was. They also found our target spend pedestrian, and explaining these were mere engagement rings and that the real money comes for the wedding rings didn’t improve matters.
This being a city of 20,000, options were limited, but we found success at the third place. This one wasn’t just a jewelry store; the guy actually was a jeweler and had a selection available but preferred doing custom pieces.
In the end, I got her a silver bypass ring with a negligible diamond off the shelf, and she got me a simple white gold band that he assured us he could add to for the wedding ring.
We were both very happy with what we picked up a week later, with hers needing to be resized and mine needing to be made.
Obviously, some phone calls happened the evening of the engagement, and my mom was a bit miffed that she only learned after the fact, despite assuring her I’d not, myself, woken up that morning thinking I’d discuss getting married.
But the net result was she offered me her engagement and wedding rings to use for the one I would design. Three diamonds were included in this, with the largest having been appraised at $7,900. I turned the smaller two into earrings and then went with a bypass solitaire. After we’d moved to another town (yay, newspapers!), we went into a jeweler and asked what we could get for the ring as a whole, gold and stone, and were told about $3,000.
It’s a racket.
(also, no diamonds were involved in my second wedding … a welded cone-spiked 1/2" stainless-steel collar is also forever)