The process of purchasing an engagement ring should be an exciting and unforgettable experience. However, spending hard-earned money on something you know so little about can also be intimidating and stressful.
The introduction of lab-grown diamonds has made making that perfect decision even trickier. Never has the jewelry industry seen so much spin and misinformation. Let me try to clear things up a bit.
First, a lab-grown diamond is actual diamond material. It sparkles like a natural diamond, wears like a natural diamond, and won’t dull over time like other natural diamond substitutes. Having said that, lab-grown is not the same as a natural diamond.
A natural diamond is a true miracle of nature, created under such extreme heat and pressure hundreds of miles below the earth’s surface that the earth has cooled too much to create them anymore. A natural diamond will always be rare and will always be valuable for this reason. Lab-grown diamonds, on the other hand, will cost less by the time you are done reading this article than when you started.
For instance, while the average selling price of a 1 ct. round natural diamond in our store is between $4,000 and $5,000, a lab-created near-perfect stone sells for approximately $250, and it seems that price will continue to fall, perhaps eventually costing a little more than a cubic zirconia.
Some voices proclaim lab-grown is a “greener” alternative, but the creation process takes a surprising amount of energy. And while the natural diamond mining industry has had issues with some unscrupulous mines taking advantage of workers, that is a minority, and the industry as a whole provides employment and income to an area of the world hungry for it.
So if the main difference is cost, the next question, of course, is, “Is natural worth it?” This is a decision each consumer needs to make.
As a human race, we have been decorating ourselves since we have been able to carve bone and hang it from our ears. What drives this desire is how we feel when we adorn ourselves with something beautiful, cool, fashionable, and valuable. The jury is still out as to what degree lab-grown material fulfills that desire, or if it feels like a cheap imitation.
One person may want to hang a genuine Monet on their wall and can appreciate all that went into creating that masterpiece. For others, a print of the same piece from Target works just fine. No judgment here, but I think the analogy works. I’m not an art expert, so if I walked into their house, I probably wouldn’t know the difference, just like the average person looking at a lab-grown diamond won’t know the difference… but the person wearing it will.
In our decades of selling engagement rings at Gaines, our philosophy has always been not to tell someone what they want or need, but to offer informative advice and let them decide what is best for them. So whichever way someone entering our store wants to go, we will gladly help them make their perfect decision.
GAINES JEWELRY OWNER DAVID GAINES
