Why the Price for Natural Diamonds is So High?

This is the question that nearly every second customer asks when he decides to make a purchase. To make it clear it's better to know some basic factors that add to diamond's final price prior you enter a jewelry shop.

1. The amount of diamond-saturated formations under the ground is giving out. Diamonds are formed deep under the ground and are hard to be mined. Moreover, the resources of kimberlite formations containing diamonds are decreasing from year to year. There are some figures to prove that: since 2000 De Beers put up more than $7 billion in mining. With that the amount of carats has dropped from 33.6 million mined in 2007 to 22.7 million mined last year. As you see, more funds are spent for mining though less gems are found.

2. Till diamond appears in the shop window it goes through many hands with each handler adding to its cost. The miner who should be paid a salary is a starting point and the retailer with churning is a final one, between them there's a range of brokers. The more that are, the higher the price will be.

3. There are 4 C's of diamonds responsible for their cost: clarity, cut, color and carat size. The better the criteria of clarity are like F-IF, VVS1-VVS2 the more you have to pay for it. Larger diamonds are not that numerous as small ones so the price for them grows disproportionally. Colored diamonds are much more expensive than whites and cut does matter, too. Whatever the stages diamond goes through till cutting, but the last always applies human factor. There's no machine that can facet diamonds but for a skillful master. It should be done in a way to give that charming brilliance, that neither a shallow, nor a deep cut can do.

If you still want to have a diamond jewelry but you can't boast having a deep pocket for that, you can opt for an alternative option – man-made diamonds. Unlike natural stones, they are made in laboratories, thus they omit the first two causes that skyrocket the price of a final product. Lear more about synthetic diamonds here, here and here.