Today, there's a lot of circulating news regarding the widespread growth of man-made or lab-grown diamonds on the international markets. Several publications have actually wrote or commented about the news relayed by De Beers, which mentions how the prices of lab-grown diamonds have fallen at least 60% since it began selling its own line of lab-grown diamonds. Among those publications are Professional Jeweller (UK), Reuters, and even the South China Morning Post (Asia). Note that we do not affiliate with these magazines or websites, the links above are just for your reference to their articles.
Laboratory grown diamonds, for those who do not know- can bypass or fool those handheld jewelry testers / diamond testers you usually see in most jewelry retail shops. We're pointing to those small 'beep' gadgets that base their assessment on thermal and electrical conductivity of course- which are useful tests for moissanite and cubic zirconia (assuming the instrument is properly calibrated and consistent). Lab-grown diamonds are also made up of carbon, and grow in the cubic crystal system, just like their natural counterparts. Advanced spectrometric testing is needed to identify the vast majority of natural diamonds today, as sometimes even gemological microscopes are no longer enough on their own.
One main marketing point that lab-grown diamond sellers use to appeal to millennials especially, is the notion that they are both ethical and eco-friendly, compared to the notorious blood diamonds that people may be familiar with. While you may or may not agree with this side of their story, each seller obviously markets his or her own product to the best they can write.
The movie 'Blood Diamond' starring Leonardo DiCaprio, showed us some terrible scenes that people have come to believe as 'standard' in natural diamond mining. Today though, the Kimberly Process and many other systems of ethical protection already protect the vast majority of the natural diamond trade. Jewellers and jewelry buyers alike do not want gemstones to help terrorists, and so the global industry as a whole has already undergone changes to safeguard the diamond industry against 'blood diamonds'.
Lab-grown diamonds are much easier to create, compared to finding and mining natural diamonds from remote areas of the globe. Some people would say this is more eco-friendly, due to the fact that no digging of earth is actually involved. Note that while the demand for lab-grown diamonds as 'cheaper' more eco-friendly diamonds continues to grow, so does the number of suppliers in the trade. More and more people are creating factories to "make" diamonds, and this can have a drastic effect on the balance between consumer pricing and general supply. The articles linked above, might help you get updated on the situation which continues to evolve every day.
