Why are mined diamonds not a good investment?

Feb 10, 2021

Diamonds

Mined Diamonds are not a good investment

This is a controversial topic we have been wanting to dive in and explore for quite some time. You will see a variation of the phrase “Mined diamonds are a good investment and hold their resale value” repeated in more than a few blogs.

What you might not know is that all of them are covertly backed by the dying mined diamond industry as a last-ditch attempt to steer back the public’s view to a more favourable position. However, the monopoly that the mined diamond industry enjoyed for almost a century has finally come to a well-deserved end.

With the end of any monopoly, comes a revitalization that benefits the consumers, the market, and in the case of diamonds, the planet. Accompanying the technological advances are seismic shifts in industries, forcing key players to adapt or risk extinction. All that is to say, there is no better time to buy an engagement ring than now.

An investment is only as valuable as someone else is willing to pay for it!

Since the beggining of human civilisation, there has been no better way to determine the true price of an item, service, or an investment other than the time-tested economic principal of supply and demand. That principal has remained demonstrably true since the inception of barter till today, even with the dizzying complexity of our global cashless economy and burgeoning cryptocurrencies.

In this article we will present to you an in-depth, yet accessible insight and analysis carefully crafted by industry leaders. We will also list the biggest factors and their role in forecasting the resell price of mined diamonds.

Environmental factor.

With the increasingly apparent effect of global warming being felt all over the world, there has been a renewed collective commitment by younger consumers in seeking out environmentally friendly alternatives to do their part in combating climate change. Therefore, mined diamonds at present, and increasingly in the future, will be frowned upon due to their outsize contribution to the destruction of the environment, loss of animal habitats, contamination of drinking water sources and deforestation just to name a few. All it takes is a simple google search of “diamond mine images” for a prospective customer to witness the vast swath of destruction they leave behind in their journey to the jewellery store.

Ethical perspective.

When it comes to mined diamonds, the ethical consideration and the environmental factor goes hand in hand as they the two issues are so intertwined that they are basically two sides of the same coin. It is well documented that the diamond mining industry actively exploit slave labour in their mines alongside their previously mentioned ecological crimes. For a long time, their actions had no consequences as they made sure to operate in impoverished and corrupt African countries with no oversight. This led to the term “blood diamonds” being synonymous with mined diamonds to signify the human cost of mining them. Furthermore, as a result of the systematic corruption and greed of the industry, it is nigh impossible to conclusively determine whether diamonds labelled “conflict free” are truly mined with slave free labour or not.

Naturally, all these appalling suffering and destruction associated with mined diamonds makes them unappealing to the conscientious customer. This trend will only continue to grow in to in future as younger and more well-informed customers come of age. After all, why would anyone want to commemorate their love and commitment of another person with a mined diamond that is responsible for the suffering of so many when, in contrast, a similar lab grown diamond is not only cheaper but truly “conflict free” and environmentally friendly.

Dee Beers mountain piles of mined diamonds.

At this point, it is an open secret in the industry that Dee Beers, like a bloated dragon, is sitting on an undeclared and hidden stash of billions of dollars’ worth of diamonds. This ridiculous fact has far reaching consequences and is crucial for our forecast. We have previously dove in deep several times in our other articles about this, including how Dee Beers monopolised and engineered the diamond prices for almost a century by forcefully capturing up to 95% of all the diamond supply in the world and only releasing a small trickle of diamonds at inflated prices. In the game of supply and demand, they singlehandedly held the supply bringing them unimaginable wealth to the detriment of, well, basically everyone else.

Second hand mined diamonds entering the market as new.

Diamonds have always held a special place in almost all societies since antiquity, however, their demand and thus their value spiked starting from the last century when they basically became the only choice to propose with. If we take the current average divorce rate as 50% (according to recent statistics), we can safely infer that half of all the diamonds sold will eventually be resold back to the market. That is an overwhelming number of diamonds being resold, not counting diamonds being liquidated from those who have passed away. To expand on this, we wrote an article in our titled “Mined diamonds and bad karma”

To summarise, Mined diamonds are far from a good investment. Desperate mined diamond companies, especially De Beers, are using this as a new marketing ploy to lure unwary and susceptible buyers to “invest” on their product but, in essence, all they are really doing is fervently trying to get rid of their quickly depreciating stocks. Being key players in a dying industry, they are acutely aware that their controversial products are losing customer appeal and, consequently, their market demand are declining day by day, while their supply keeps on increasing. After all, mined diamonds are not exempt from the universal principals of supply and demand.

Interesting find: Bill Sechos is regarded by many as the top gemmologist in Australia and New Zealand and his laboratory GSL (Gems Study Laboratory) is renowned all over the world for their relaiablity; Bill wrote an article earlier this year where he suggested that lab grown diamonds were a better choice for those looking to get engaged instead of mined diamonds.

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