Are lab-grown diamonds a good alternative to natural diamonds?

[devshivam]

Updates

+1 y

So now can you tell them what is moissanite?

[Fireguy17]

yeppers.
I owned out families jewelry store for 32 years, amongst doing many other things.
As long as you know the plusses and minuses about them.
They cost way less as they are less expensive vs finding natural stones.
The prices will probably continue to drop as the process gets better, so what you pay today will probably cost less in the future.
Size matters, you can get a larger stone for way lees money in a lab stone vs a natural.
Make sure whomever you are giving it to knows what it is.
Never try to pass it off as a natural diamond, they will at some point go get it checked to see if it is real.
I've done that countless times. Your ass will be sucking canal water if you do, and she finds out.
Make sure if you are buying a natural stone, you verify that it is a natural diamond, not a lab stone.
You cannot tell by just looking at it, you need specialized testers to tell them apart.
At some point in time if you sell, or need to sell a lab stone good luck, they are cheap and plentiful.
That said if you go to or need to sell a natural stone if you can do it private party you will be lucky if you get 40% of your money out of it, and going to a store like mine or anyone else's store, remember we can buy them wholesale, so why would we ever pay more than that for it.
I paid squat for them over the counter, and would only buy them if it was a good deal for me, otherwise I could pick up the phone and have whatever I needed on my door step the next day, and if the deal didn't go through, I could return it.
I loved memo, just a few bucks in postage. Great credit really helped.
If you do decide on a lab, get a good gold/plat mounting, don't skimp out on that, you will pay for it in the long run if you do not get something good.
If the mounting has side diamonds and you choose to go with a lab center just do the side stones as labs.
If the store tells you they can't do that, go to another store because they can.
I just ordered the mounting with whatever I needed, or simply set them up myself.
The issue if they are "green" stones is still debatable.
They had to build a factory, build the machines that make them and use power to do so.
Is it better than digging a big ass hole if the ground to go get them, probably, but it still takes energy to grow them.
Feel free to ask me anything else.

[slatyb]

Yes, a very good alternative. They are essentially identical, except that synthetic diamonds are considerably cheaper.

But really, what's so important about having a diamond? The whole diamond ring thing was concocted by the DeBeers diamond cartel. And you don't have to buy new. My wife is wearing a 100-year-old one carat ring from a vintage jewelry store that she just loves.

[PonyCar]

Yes. You get the pretty rock for less money and without some poor African child's slave labor hanging over your head (karmically-speaking).

[Nikki1989]

If you like diamonds, sure, I guess so.

[Lliam]

I think so. The price of natural diamonds is artificially inflated.
Lab-grown diamonds are just as good or better. And they are less expensive, so you can get a larger, higher quality one for less than a natural diamond and nobody will know the difference.

[exitseven]

I have heard that they are better. They do not have flaws.

[Fireguy17]

no they can have flaws, you can get lab grown in most every grade, I can get an I/J color SI1/SI2 clarity, far from flawless.

[exitseven]

@Fireguy17 I just learned something new today. I read an article in Popular Science a long time ago when General Electric first synthesized diamonds and that was one of the things I read was that they did not have any flaws.

[Fireguy17]

could be.
Todays do as well as they have D IF, and that is one of the reasons it is so hard to tell them apart from natural stones as the inclusions mimic a natural stone.
D IF in the natural world are not as prevalent as stones with some inclusions, so if you started seeing an influx of IF stones then you could lean more towards that they are lab stones.

[Anonymous]

Soo... fireguy17 is saying they're not a good alternative for all those reasons.

[Fireguy17]

they are a very good alternative, you just need to know both sides, the pros and the cons of natural stones and lab stones.
That way you the customer can make an unbiased decision based on the facts, both good and bad.

[DextroShade]

Yes, it's all just sparkly carbon.

[Iron_Man]

Have them checked out