PEOPLE ARE BUYING BIGGER DIAMONDS!
THE BUYING TREND OF BIGGER DIAMONDS - A LAB-GROWN DIAMOND RESULT
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One thing’s for sure…
Lab-grown diamonds are here to stay.
Because last year was an explosion of lab-grown diamonds everywhere, in every jewelry store, in all the catalogs, ads, billboards…It was lab-grown diamonds getting radio advertisements, almost exclusively…
Why?
Because of the prices.
The prices of lab-grown diamonds has dropped so much in the past few years because of demand. It’s a mind-blowing reality. For example, you can get a 3 carat lab-grown diamond, right now, for under $6,000. That is insane.
I work with jewelers doing advertising, and I see it every day. The prices keep dropping due to competition. It’s to the point where they can’t drop anymore.
So what has lab-grown diamonds done to the industry?
You would think it would mean that jewelry stores are only making half the profit that they used to…
With prices so low, and engagement rings selling cheap, one would expect low margins and less money in the bank. But this is not the case…
Jewelers are making up the difference in more sales, because diamonds are much more affordable now. They are making it up with bigger diamond sales than normal. One local jeweler I know just had his 3rd biggest year in a row (after being in business for over 35 years). It used to be that anything over 1.00 carat was considered a big deal. But now, half the rings we sell are over 1 carat (so much for the dream diamond carat weight). People are buying 2 carats, 3 carats, 4… Because they are affordable. It’s like a win-win situation.
And I see no end to it.
What will happen to Earth-grown diamonds?
These prices have come down too. With less demand on the market, they had no choice but to evolve and keep their market share.
Many jewelers originally thought lab-grown diamonds was just going to be a trend. Just like rose gold, trilliants, platinum, and Moissanites. But lab-grown diamonds have filled the showcases and the hearts of the consumer, especially the younger generation, and especially now with the downward economy.
So what’s your take on buying bigger diamonds?
Are you buying bigger with lab-grown diamonds? Or are you still spending $30,000 for that 3 carat? Let me know in the comments below.
Cheers! :)
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Not spending $30,000 OR $6,000, or even $600 on any kind of diamonds – simulated, moissanite, lab grown or otherwise. But then, I’m not exactly in the market for either one.
If I WERE in the market for an engagementring, I’m not really quite sure what I’d be looking for, or hinting about! I grew up in the “natural, mined diamonds only” world, and while I agree they’ve always been artificially overpriced since DeBeers swallowed up the market, buying what you could afford was really the guiding principle that most of us grew up learning. That didn’t mean you had to buy garbage just because it was less expensive, but basically everyone who knew you and your boyfriend or fiance also had a pretty good idea about your finances too. Showing up suddenly in a markedly larger stone than you could obviously afford meant one of two things. Either it was some kind of a fake – CZs didn’t even hit the retail market until the year I got engaged, and even then they were set in gold, never silver, upping the price, and were much larger than anything I would wear, because it just wasn’t believable – or the two of you (or maybe just him, since women then just didn’t pay for their ring, which the man was supposed to buy) were suddenly up to your neck/necks in debt for years for something you would never be able to afford normally, and you were just doing it to be a show-off.
The rest of your lifestyle would be telling the tales on you – your wedding, your wedding band, your new home (house or apartment) together, your car or cars, your wardrobe, etc.
Not demanding something that you knew was not affordable by the man you claimed to love just seemed like another way to express that love, by accepting what he could actually afford to buy for you, and being gracious about it. (That’s what we did.)
But, that’s the kind of values I adopted for myself, using the behavior I was shown at home as examples of what NOT to do and be. And it surely paid off! We celebrate our 48th anniversary this coming July!
And over the last 25 – 30 years, I have developed SUCH a collection of different sized and types of engagement rings, wedding bands, ring sets, birthstone rings, etc., they will barely fit into a rings-only storage box that should hold 100 of them! It’s running over.
I should sort through them, and sell off what I don’t need or can’t wear anymore, but selling them myself is just such a big pain! And I don’t want to deal with pawn shops or antique stores (some of these are true vintage pieces, back to the early 40s). I know that at least some of them will try to get one over on me, and I hate confrontations! So, what’s a girl to do?