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Comment by aprilthird2021 | Hacker News Reader

aprilthird2021

I actually predict in a few years it will become more fashionable to wear other jewels over diamonds given the rate the prices are crashing at. When diamonds are competitive with all the other gemstones, people start looking at those the same way too

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Lab rubies, sapphires, emeralds and basically anything you can think of with a known chemical makeup is being produced en masse by factories all over India and China.

Here’s just one sellers assortment of various “roughs” https://www.gemsngems.com/product-category/rough-stones/lab-...

As someone who doesn’t care about the authenticity of the gems provenance and only about having consistent physical properties for rock tumbling and gem faceting, it’s been very nice for the budget

Diamonds are quite possibly the only stone that isn't yet essentially 100% artificial. Rubies, the next hardest stone, is trivial to make artificially:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcdRQmQcHQ

moissanite is harder than ruby afaik. Also more beautiful than diamond imo.

You're a few years too late, as this trend has been been happening for a decade at this point. You can find many articles online about how millenialls and now gen-z are ditching diamonds.

Are they ditching diamonds because if fashion, or are they ditching diamonds like they’re ditching buying houses? I would bet affordability is more likely the cause of decline in younger people

Diamonds have absolutely catered in affordability in the last few years, so I think it's probably fashionable. I've seen more and more people say they want something different than a diamond ring and I think part of it is that they aren't worth multiples of any other ring anymore

But as soon as that happens, other gemstones will come in cheaper artificial varieties as well.

The biggest diamond alternative today, moissanite, is always artificial - ironically because its natural form is so rare that it's not obtainable.

The point is more that people would move to gemstones that don't look like diamonds, if diamonds start being perceived as cheap. Moissanite was popular because it's not immediately obvious it's not a diamond, while diamonds were popular.

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