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The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. They wanted to differentiate between natural and la

The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. They wanted to differentiate between natural and lab-grown versions with the former being much more expensive. But that train has left the station since there's little to no difference in quality between the two. In fact, I once predicted there'd be huge scams where lab-grown ones would be repackaged and sold as natural ones and that would ruin customers' trust in natural diamonds. But it now seems that isn't going to happen because customers are voting with their feet and leaving natural diamonds behind.

x0x0 11d ago
there goes their veblen goods...
bsoqk 11d ago
> The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. Just like the luxury watches market ceased to exist when you could buy quartz watches for 10 bucks.
- Loughla 11d ago
  Except in this case, the quartz watches would be better quality than the luxury watches I'm not sure your analogy has teeth.
  - literalAardvark 11d ago
    The quartz watches are (way) better at time keeping. And the rest is just a matter of paying for luxury. The main reason the analogy doesn't really help is that the mechanical watch market absolutely cratered, and it's only being propped up by enthusiasts of cool machines. Diamonds can't really have that. They've already scammed the general population into using slave diamonds at monopoly prices for 30 years longer than they needed to, but no one is _passionate_ about slave diamonds.
    - tptacek 11d ago
      It's a poor analogy because mechanical watches and quartz watches aren't perfect substitutes and aren't purchased for the same reasons. Everybody's phone keeps better time than a watch; absolute accuracy isn't the exclusive measure. Lab diamonds and mined diamonds are literally identical products.
      - Der_Einzige 11d ago
        Now a days the imperfections themselves in the rings are what are valued in natural diamonds. People from India, thailand, Myanmar etc have not and probably won’t for a very long time abandon a strong preference for natural diamonds, regardless of how much “better” the lab grown ones are. This is a textbook case of “worse is better”.
      - dingaling 11d ago
        > and aren't purchased for the same reasons Yes, that's his point. Quartz watches have eaten the market for "I need a cheap portable time piece", like artificial diamonds did for "I need diamonds for tooling". Both mechanical watches and natural diamonds have therefore been pushed into a niche market of posers and the easily-influenced, who buy them for different reasons than the mass market. > Lab diamonds and mined diamonds are literally identical products. No, mined diamonds are inferior for any industrial task due to their flaws and weaknesses.
  - hn_submit 10d ago
    Mechanical watches are a luxury item where the intricate craftsmanship is highly valued, even though they're completely obsolete compared to even the simplest quartz movement. That analogy doesn't hold for natural diamonds and the comparison therefore falls flat on its face.
    - pibaker 10d ago
      There will certainly be people who will pay a premium for certified 100% natural diamonds. But there is probably not enough to support the diamond mining industry as it exists today.
      - hn_submit 9d ago
        Like I said: there will be scams where lab-grown diamonds will be sold as natural ones which will ruin customers' willingness to pay more for them.
- cjbgkagh 11d ago
  Well the privet to luxury was due to quartz watches taking their core business, and now Chinese superclones are in the early days of threatening their luxury business. At a certain point it’s hard to care about the residual difference.
  - ButlerianJihad 11d ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privet This may have been a nerd-snipe for Harry Potter fans, but I still struggle to interpolate an acccurate word there. "pivot to luxury"?
    - cjbgkagh 11d ago
      Yes ‘pivot’ somehow a double typo or perhaps some weird autocorrection. Sorry about that.
  - mcv 11d ago
    I've heard that even experts can't tell those superclones apart from the originals anymore. Are they equally reliable?
    - cjbgkagh 10d ago
      I wouldn't know
- preg_match 10d ago
  A luxury diamond and a lab grown diamond are equivalent. Well not always, lab grown are typically higher quality. The comparison doesn’t work.
willsmith72 11d ago
> there's little to no difference in quality between the two Lab grown can be way better quality. To me it was a no-brainer considering the ethical concerns, then add in the cost difference. The only argument I've heard for natural is "I like the imperfections". Sounds like brainwashing to me. They're chemically identical The mining industry should die
- kstrauser 11d ago
  I personally find lab grown much more beautiful, in that they’re an amazing accomplishment of mankind’s science and technology. So a tree got squeezed underground until it turned into a crystal? Cool, I guess, but big deal. Humans learned enough about how matter works to recreate those conditions at industrial scale? That’s amazing! I’d much rather wear a monument to our cleverness than a dinosaur mashed under a rock.
  - andrewflnr 11d ago
    This is a more honest and realistic take than most on the thread. Note that either way it's the provenance behind the gem that you find attractive, much more than any instantaneous quality of it like chemistry, lack/presence of defects, etc. It's the story.
    - kstrauser 11d ago
      It’s not only that. Lab diamonds are superior in every way I’ve heard of. The emotional appeal of their provenance is the sole remaining reason I’ve heard people claim that slave diamonds are superior. I contend that they’re worse there, too. In fact, the only reason I can imagine someone preferring mined diamonds is that they genuinely value the human suffering that goes into them.
      - Skunkleton 11d ago
        If you ignore the ethical issues, and you shouldn't (!!!), there is an appeal to mined diamonds, and it is exactly what you say above. The idea that some dinosaur or tree or whatever got mushed down is really interesting too.
Loughla 11d ago
My spouse lost the main stone on their ring. We were able to get another that was twice the size and WAAAY better clarity and quality for about half of the price of the first one. It's astonishing that it has taken this long to have this kind of impact.
mulderc 11d ago
I knew someone who was an economist for a major jewelry company and he said ~15 years ago that the writing was on the wall that lab grown diamonds were going to decimate their sales. He wanted them to start promoting them and be the more ethical and green alternative. He did not last long there.
- thephyber 11d ago
  It's almost like he's undermining the one single thing the diamond sales industry had used to thrive for nearly a century before him.
  - mulderc 11d ago
    Since the company itself didn’t mine diamonds and basically just took the market rate, his estimate was that they could achieve even better profit margins with lab-grown diamonds and would be positioned well even with eventual market competition. Given some other stories he had about the company, it sounds like they were more interested in not rocking the boat than long-term profits.
    - pixelpoet 11d ago
      You definitely don't want to rock the boat and undermine the diamond industry, that much is crystal clear.
  - deleted 9d ago
    [deleted]
newyankee 11d ago
If anything, much later than what I anticipated it would take. One place where one has to appreciate Chinese scale.
xyzelement 11d ago
I am sure the market will be smaller but I don't think it'll go away. I would segment the "diamond ring" market into two: those who "feel obligated" to give/receive a diamond ring because of peer pressure, and those who genuinely find some meaning in the idea of an expensive engagement token. Personally I thought I was in group 1 but turns out in my own life I am group two. So it never appealed to me to get a lab ring, and I know my wife would be put off by it. Meanwhile my best friend and his wife got the same size lab stone for somewhat cheaper and are happy with that. Group 1 and that's great. So yes I agree with you the market will shrink because those who were never inherently interested in a high value stone will all go for lab - but perhaps the diminished supply of natural stones (this story) will keep the value of them higher for those who care.
Fwirt 11d ago
Not only that, but why buy diamonds when Moissanite exists? Not as hard as diamond (by a tiny amount) but much less brittle and much more sparkle. Also even more “rare” than diamond since the only natural occurring ones are microscopic. Plus they come in colors! It took a while to talk my wife down off of the diamond industry’s hype, but she loves lab grown stones now.
stasomatic 10d ago
[dead]
throw0101a 10d ago
> The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. Maybe. But the whole point was that diamonds were (marketed as) being special because they were rare and expensive, and so a status symbol. If they're so cheap as to put them in Kinder Eggs or Cracker Jack boxes, what's the point of having a diamond all? Going forward people (or some class thereof) may move onto other gems that are still rare and cannot (yet?) be manufactured.
pseudohadamard 10d ago
Every few years, going back to at least the 1980s, there's some new feature-length article about how $new_thing or $different_old_thing will make de Beers irrelevant within the next few years. I'm not old enough to know about earlier ones but I wouldn't be surprised if it went back to at least the 1950s and the flood of Soviet diamonds. de Beers is still around, and doing well, having taken care of every threat that's come along, including the Soviet diamond glut. Some of the publications that speculated on their imminent demise are no longer around.
alun 9d ago
Not to advocate for the diamond cartels, but your logic that equal diamond quality implies equal price feels wrong. Otherwise, a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa would cost the same as the original.

x0x0 11d ago

there goes their veblen goods...

bsoqk 11d ago

> The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. Just like the luxury watches market ceased to exist when you could buy quartz watches for 10 bucks.

Loughla 11d ago
Except in this case, the quartz watches would be better quality than the luxury watches I'm not sure your analogy has teeth.
- literalAardvark 11d ago
  The quartz watches are (way) better at time keeping. And the rest is just a matter of paying for luxury. The main reason the analogy doesn't really help is that the mechanical watch market absolutely cratered, and it's only being propped up by enthusiasts of cool machines. Diamonds can't really have that. They've already scammed the general population into using slave diamonds at monopoly prices for 30 years longer than they needed to, but no one is _passionate_ about slave diamonds.
  - tptacek 11d ago
    It's a poor analogy because mechanical watches and quartz watches aren't perfect substitutes and aren't purchased for the same reasons. Everybody's phone keeps better time than a watch; absolute accuracy isn't the exclusive measure. Lab diamonds and mined diamonds are literally identical products.
    - Der_Einzige 11d ago
      Now a days the imperfections themselves in the rings are what are valued in natural diamonds. People from India, thailand, Myanmar etc have not and probably won’t for a very long time abandon a strong preference for natural diamonds, regardless of how much “better” the lab grown ones are. This is a textbook case of “worse is better”.
    - dingaling 11d ago
      > and aren't purchased for the same reasons Yes, that's his point. Quartz watches have eaten the market for "I need a cheap portable time piece", like artificial diamonds did for "I need diamonds for tooling". Both mechanical watches and natural diamonds have therefore been pushed into a niche market of posers and the easily-influenced, who buy them for different reasons than the mass market. > Lab diamonds and mined diamonds are literally identical products. No, mined diamonds are inferior for any industrial task due to their flaws and weaknesses.
- hn_submit 10d ago
  Mechanical watches are a luxury item where the intricate craftsmanship is highly valued, even though they're completely obsolete compared to even the simplest quartz movement. That analogy doesn't hold for natural diamonds and the comparison therefore falls flat on its face.
  - pibaker 10d ago
    There will certainly be people who will pay a premium for certified 100% natural diamonds. But there is probably not enough to support the diamond mining industry as it exists today.
    - hn_submit 9d ago
      Like I said: there will be scams where lab-grown diamonds will be sold as natural ones which will ruin customers' willingness to pay more for them.
cjbgkagh 11d ago
Well the privet to luxury was due to quartz watches taking their core business, and now Chinese superclones are in the early days of threatening their luxury business. At a certain point it’s hard to care about the residual difference.
- ButlerianJihad 11d ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privet This may have been a nerd-snipe for Harry Potter fans, but I still struggle to interpolate an acccurate word there. "pivot to luxury"?
  - cjbgkagh 11d ago
    Yes ‘pivot’ somehow a double typo or perhaps some weird autocorrection. Sorry about that.
- mcv 11d ago
  I've heard that even experts can't tell those superclones apart from the originals anymore. Are they equally reliable?
  - cjbgkagh 10d ago
    I wouldn't know
preg_match 10d ago
A luxury diamond and a lab grown diamond are equivalent. Well not always, lab grown are typically higher quality. The comparison doesn’t work.

willsmith72 11d ago

> there's little to no difference in quality between the two Lab grown can be way better quality. To me it was a no-brainer considering the ethical concerns, then add in the cost difference. The only argument I've heard for natural is "I like the imperfections". Sounds like brainwashing to me. They're chemically identical The mining industry should die

kstrauser 11d ago
I personally find lab grown much more beautiful, in that they’re an amazing accomplishment of mankind’s science and technology. So a tree got squeezed underground until it turned into a crystal? Cool, I guess, but big deal. Humans learned enough about how matter works to recreate those conditions at industrial scale? That’s amazing! I’d much rather wear a monument to our cleverness than a dinosaur mashed under a rock.
- andrewflnr 11d ago
  This is a more honest and realistic take than most on the thread. Note that either way it's the provenance behind the gem that you find attractive, much more than any instantaneous quality of it like chemistry, lack/presence of defects, etc. It's the story.
  - kstrauser 11d ago
    It’s not only that. Lab diamonds are superior in every way I’ve heard of. The emotional appeal of their provenance is the sole remaining reason I’ve heard people claim that slave diamonds are superior. I contend that they’re worse there, too. In fact, the only reason I can imagine someone preferring mined diamonds is that they genuinely value the human suffering that goes into them.
    - Skunkleton 11d ago
      If you ignore the ethical issues, and you shouldn't (!!!), there is an appeal to mined diamonds, and it is exactly what you say above. The idea that some dinosaur or tree or whatever got mushed down is really interesting too.

Loughla 11d ago

My spouse lost the main stone on their ring. We were able to get another that was twice the size and WAAAY better clarity and quality for about half of the price of the first one. It's astonishing that it has taken this long to have this kind of impact.

mulderc 11d ago

I knew someone who was an economist for a major jewelry company and he said ~15 years ago that the writing was on the wall that lab grown diamonds were going to decimate their sales. He wanted them to start promoting them and be the more ethical and green alternative. He did not last long there.

thephyber 11d ago
It's almost like he's undermining the one single thing the diamond sales industry had used to thrive for nearly a century before him.
- mulderc 11d ago
  Since the company itself didn’t mine diamonds and basically just took the market rate, his estimate was that they could achieve even better profit margins with lab-grown diamonds and would be positioned well even with eventual market competition. Given some other stories he had about the company, it sounds like they were more interested in not rocking the boat than long-term profits.
  - pixelpoet 11d ago
    You definitely don't want to rock the boat and undermine the diamond industry, that much is crystal clear.
- deleted 9d ago
  [deleted]

newyankee 11d ago

If anything, much later than what I anticipated it would take. One place where one has to appreciate Chinese scale.

xyzelement 11d ago

I am sure the market will be smaller but I don't think it'll go away. I would segment the "diamond ring" market into two: those who "feel obligated" to give/receive a diamond ring because of peer pressure, and those who genuinely find some meaning in the idea of an expensive engagement token. Personally I thought I was in group 1 but turns out in my own life I am group two. So it never appealed to me to get a lab ring, and I know my wife would be put off by it. Meanwhile my best friend and his wife got the same size lab stone for somewhat cheaper and are happy with that. Group 1 and that's great. So yes I agree with you the market will shrink because those who were never inherently interested in a high value stone will all go for lab - but perhaps the diminished supply of natural stones (this story) will keep the value of them higher for those who care.

Fwirt 11d ago

Not only that, but why buy diamonds when Moissanite exists? Not as hard as diamond (by a tiny amount) but much less brittle and much more sparkle. Also even more “rare” than diamond since the only natural occurring ones are microscopic. Plus they come in colors! It took a while to talk my wife down off of the diamond industry’s hype, but she loves lab grown stones now.

stasomatic 10d ago

[dead]

throw0101a 10d ago

> The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. Maybe. But the whole point was that diamonds were (marketed as) being special because they were rare and expensive, and so a status symbol. If they're so cheap as to put them in Kinder Eggs or Cracker Jack boxes, what's the point of having a diamond all? Going forward people (or some class thereof) may move onto other gems that are still rare and cannot (yet?) be manufactured.

pseudohadamard 10d ago

Every few years, going back to at least the 1980s, there's some new feature-length article about how $new_thing or $different_old_thing will make de Beers irrelevant within the next few years. I'm not old enough to know about earlier ones but I wouldn't be surprised if it went back to at least the 1950s and the flood of Soviet diamonds. de Beers is still around, and doing well, having taken care of every threat that's come along, including the Soviet diamond glut. Some of the publications that speculated on their imminent demise are no longer around.

alun 9d ago

Not to advocate for the diamond cartels, but your logic that equal diamond quality implies equal price feels wrong. Otherwise, a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa would cost the same as the original.