Diamond Black Holes : The LGD impact on the lower rough diamond clarities.
Just like black holes that swallow whole solar systems in a galaxy, in the diamond micro-cosmos, LGD bite into ranges of diamond assortments. Unlike the mystery on the-other-side-of-black-holes, the rough diamond transformation starts to clear out on the other side of the lab grown dust cloud.
An Indian broker who deals with melee diamonds (referring to 2 to 8 point range) on the Antwerp market, revealed an aspect of the change with a simple question: “who wants to buy heavy pique goods for $130 to $180 per carat, when collection color and clean LGD melee sells for $90?”.
Another diamond trader based in NY expressed his frustration regarding similar qualities but in larger sizes: “It took me over 20 years to build a successful business focusing on I2 and I3 goods, one, two and even well above 5 carat stones. But it took just 3 years to see how all this market was destroyed by those synthetic stones! And they dare to call those stones ‘diamonds’! Oh yes, listen to this, here in the US, I am not even allowed to call this unnatural carbon by its true name: ‘synthetics’. They might be offended.”.
The devastated Israeli – American trader, added with a tragic smile, kind of trying to cheer himself up, “nobody knows anymore who’s what. Some girls and boys must be referred to as ‘they’, just like some synthetic, heavily polluting stones must be referred to as ‘diamonds’. And here in the US, you could be sued if you just dare to call those confused genders or stones by the wrong name.”.
Humor aside, up the supply chain, on the rough market level, lab grown intruders have also impacted low clarity prices, throughout all size categories. Heavily spotted sawables (Diamond Herald Price List Spt 2 and 3. Clv etc), lost ground in the past 3 years. But rough diamonds did not lose all their value like the finished polished diamond low clarities did.
In place of finishing larger stones in lower clarities, spotted diamonds are being sawn and cleaved into smaller clean makeables (Si and better). These are polished then, into cleaner round stones or even better, into the strongly demanded fancy shapes.
The processing shift answers to the growing demand of marquise, pear shape, oval, with occasional heart-shapes, to cheer up those broken-hearted traders, who suffer from this challenging market restructuring.
Will the LGD wave prove to become a passing confusing wave, just like the LGBTQIA+ wave, time will tell..