Lab-grown diamonds, indistinguishable from mined diamonds, are flooding onto the market, at a tenth of the price of those that came out of the earth. Photo: Alexia Russell
Diamonds may be forever but at the moment they're not holding up in value. Prices are sinking as a major disruptor floods the market
Diamonds are having a pearls moment.
Once upon a time pearls were the world's most valuable jewellery item - their extreme rarity making them the way to display wealth to the world.
But in the early 1900s Japanese pearl famers worked out how to culture them and for the first time, a string of round pearls became affordable and obtainable.
Now, lab-grown diamonds, indistinguishable from mined diamonds, are flooding onto the market at a tenth of the price of those that came out of the earth.
But before you rush out to buy a ring that will give you more bang for your buck, think again - the price of yellow gold has risen so much that if you want your sparkler set in a gold band, it could well have cancelled out your savings.
"We've had big movements in diamond prices, in both mined and lab diamonds, over the past five years," says Newsroom senior business reporter Alice Peacock.
"A lot of jewellers, a lot of retailers have been getting into the lab space, and manufacturing of lab diamonds has increased a lot over the last decade. They've been around for a few decades but have really taken off in popularity over the last 10 years.
"There's a bit of confused terminology around what lab diamonds are, but they are real diamonds. The chemical and the physical makeup of them is exactly the same. Essentially you can't tell the difference. I think people have different ideas about the ethics of them, but again that's a bit of a murky area."
The split between customers who want a lab or a mined diamond varies greatly between outlets, but Peacock says Michael Hill Jeweller told her it's still lower than 50 percent. In its Canadian and Australian stores however, the demand is higher. In the US demand is soaring.
Zoë and Morgan is a bespoke jeweller in Auckland. If you look at the company's website you will see side by side two rings, a two-carat lab diamond for $6,000, and a mined diamond of 1.01 carats for $16,700.
Zoë Williams is the co-owner of Zoë and Morgan, a bespoke jeweller in Auckland Photo: Alexia Russell
Zoë Williams is the co-owner and says at the moment more than half of her customers are opting for a lab-grown diamond - but it's a really changeable situation.
She tells The Detail that many customers come in who don't know what lab diamonds are, or who think they're fake.
"It's been fun just to be able to chat about the different processes ... obviously the way diamonds have been extracted through history is really horrible."
However, the increasing popularity of lab diamonds has forced the "natural" diamond industry to improve its game, with more ethical operations and giving back to the communities they're taken from.
Williams explains how jewellers can trace the origins of mined stones using the code each one comes with.
"In modern times, all of those mining processes have had to become much more ethically-minded to come up to speed with how we should be treating our humans in the world.
"And that's a fantastic thing. That's what I personally quite like about the lab diamonds coming onto the market, is it's .... caused the other side of the industry to really tidy up their act and to really become a lot more responsible. And within all of these things there's pros and cons ... but I do feel like we've made some great advances in the last few years."
But lab-grown diamonds aren't spotless when it comes to sustainability - it takes an immense amount of energy to make them and there are nasty chemicals involved.
Williams says the diamond market is also no longer just about engagement rings, but people are buying them to mark special moments in their lives - from the 21-year-old who's celebrating getting a job, to someone who's not waiting for someone to give them a diamond, to those who've made it to 40 and are happy with where they are in life.
They might not be quite the investment they used to be sold as, but Williams questions if that really matters.
"Sometimes I like the idea that it doesn't stand up financially, but it holds an incredible story and it holds a lot of personal value, and I think that's really important as well."
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