Drop The Diamond For Another Gemstone
Consider Diamond Alternatives
Other Gemstones
An engagement ring does not have to have a diamond as its center pieces. There are other gemstones such as sapphires, emeralds, and rubies, besides diamonds that are used for engagement rings. However, if you decide to go with a non-traditional engagement ring and use another gemstone instead of a diamond, make sure the other gemstone hard enough to hold up to being worn everyday.
A gemstone’s hardness is graded on the Mohs scale. When choosing a gemstone for an engagement ring that will be worn everyday, anything lower than an 8.0 on the Mohs scale is unsuitable. Softer and less durable gemstones like pearls and opals are poor choices for an engagement ring.
Man-Made Diamonds
Man-made diamonds, also called synthetic, lab-created, manufactured, lab-grown, or cultured, are true diamonds. Although not formed by nature, man-made diamonds share the chemical, physical and optical qualities of mined diamonds and are less expensive. Like a real diamond, a man-made diamond is carbon crystallized at extremely high temperatures and pressures. Man-made diamonds have been around since the 1950s and have been used mainly in industrial purposes. But in recently years, advances in the process of glowing diamonds have produced gem quality diamonds.
Most of the lab-grown diamonds produced today are still one carat or smaller. Colored diamonds are more common among synthetic diamonds and colorless stones are rare. The prices of man-made diamonds are expected to decline as production increases. Two companies that make synthetic diamonds are Apollo and Gemesis.
Diamond Simulates
Not to be confused with man-made or laboratory-grown diamonds, simulates or imitations diamonds are not diamonds at all. Diamond simulates are made of other materials such as zirconium oxide (cubic zirconia) or silicon carbide (moissanite). The best example is cubic zirconia (CZ) which has been around since since 1976. Moissanite is a newer creation coming onto the market in the late 1990s. Currently, only on company makes moissanite.
CZ and other imitation diamonds do not have the same properties as natural diamonds and are usually very cheap compared to natural or man-made diamonds. A cubic zirconia of the same size as a natural diamond is heavier. The CZ will weigh about 1.6 times more than the diamond because the zirconium oxide is denser than the crystallized carbon of a diamond. A CZ is softer than diamonds, scoring an 8.3 on the Mohs scale. Moissanite comes closer to a real diamond. It scores a 9.25 on the Mohs scale but it cannot quite compete with a diamond’s colorless quality.
The similarities of CZ to a real diamond are so remarkable that even a jeweler or gemologist can’t always tell the difference when viewed with the naked eye. One difference between a CZ and a real diamond is that cubic zirconias are excellent insulators of heat, where as diamonds are good conductors of heat. Tests with the right equipment will be able to pick out a CZ from real diamonds.
Irish Claddagh Ring
The Claddagh ring is a traditional Irish ring and custom believe to have originated in the 17th century outside the Irish city of Galway in the fishing village of Claddagh. The ring is given in as a symbol of promise and engagement but also has the added meaning of friendship.
Claddaghs are still worn today, primarily by those of Irish heritage, as both a cultural symbol and as engagement and wedding rings. However, the Claddagh ring has become popular with many non-Irish couples due to the tradition and meaning behind it.
Simple Gold Band
Consider a nicely carved band in gold can usually be found for under $200.
Other Tips to Save Money Buying An Engagement Ring: Engagement Ring On The Cheap, Engagement Ring For Less, Save Money When Buying The Diamond, Drop The Diamond For Another Gemstone
White Sapphire
White Sapphire – Gemstone Engagement Ring
White sapphires, or clear sapphires, have been used as diamond simulates since the early twentieth century. Unlike other imitation, fake or man-made diamonds, sapphire is a natural gemstone
Sapphire is a variety of the mineral corundum. The mineral is aluminum oxide – diamond is carbon – that crystallized under high pressure and heat at a great depth in Earth’s core.
Sapphires make good diamond simulates because their radiance and brilliance are close to that of natural diamonds, but are less expensive. Sapphires are the second hardest natural mineral on the Mohs scale, exceeded only by diamonds.
Natural sapphire comes in many different colors, from the rare colorless to blue, pink, green, and purple. In its purest form, corundum is colorless. Blue sapphire is corundum that is contaminated with iron or titanium. Other elements turn corundum into red, pink, blue, black, brown, orange, yellow, green, indigo, or violet sapphire. Sapphires that are colors other than blue are called fancy sapphires. Red sapphires are called rubies and not red sapphires.
Because white sapphires are rare in nature, natural gray to light yellow stones are treated to remove the color to make them clear – or white.
Some companies also grow their own stones, creating synthetic sapphires that have the same properties as the real thing. A synthetic white sapphire, like a synthetic diamond, is usually less expensive that natural stones because consumers think of lab-grown gems as inferior to the real thing. However, man-made stones are usually better quality due to the controlled growing conditions.
Sapphire prices range from a few dollars per carat to thousands of dollars per carat. Just like the price of a diamond, the price of a sapphire can be gauged based on the four C’s: color, clarity, cut, and carat.
A sapphire’s birthplace also figures into its price. The most priced and expensive sapphires are from Kashmir. Next priced sapphires are Burmese sapphires, and then comes sapphires from Ceylon.
Sapphires are mined in Ceylon, Thailand, India, Burma, Vietnam and Cambodia. Other areas of the world where sapphires are mines are in Brazil, Australia, Columbia, Kenya, Madagascar and Malawi. Sapphires are also found in Montana and Colorado in the western United States.
Other Diamond Simulants: cubic zirconia, Moissanite, Russian Brilliants, Diamond Nexus, white topaz
LifeGem
A LifeGem synthetic diamond may not be appropriate to use for an engagement ring, but LifeGem has a truly unique approach to making man-made diamonds. LifeGem will make custom diamonds from carbon samples of deceased family members. Marketed as a “diamond tribute for you and your family,” the company gets the carbon sample from cremated ashes or the hair from a deceased and use the carbon sample as the seed to create a synthetic diamond.
LifeGem was founded in 1999, and is headquartered in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. They also have offices in Europe, United Kingdom, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and Canada. LifeGem collaborates with funeral homes and cremation service businesses in those countries to offer their unique synthetic diamonds.
LifeGem uses High Pressure-High Temperature (HPHT) to make their diamonds. Most man-made or synthetic diamonds are usually marketed as being less expensive than natural, mined diamonds, but that is not the case with LifeGem, which uses the emotional and sentimental value of its diamonds to command prices much higher than natural diamonds.
Learn more about Lifegem diamonds at the company’s website: http://www.lifegem.com/
Synthetics Diamonds
Synthetic diamonds, also called lab-grown diamonds, lab-created diamonds, manufactured diamonds and cultured diamonds, have been around for decades. General Electric has been producing synthetic diamonds for industrial purposes for years. But until recent technological developments, these industrial diamonds were well below gem-quality and were too small to be cut for use in jewelry. Twenty-first century technology made it possible to produce pure, colorless laboratory grown diamonds that are virtually indistinguishable from mined diamonds, but cost much less than natural diamonds of similar quality.
Synthetic diamonds has all the same physical, chemical and optical qualities of natural diamonds. The only difference is that natural diamonds are formed hundreds of miles below the surface of the Earth, under high temperature and pressure over millions of years, and synthetic diamonds are formed under the same temperature and pressure conditions in a laboratory in only days. High quality synthetic diamonds look so much like real diamonds that they can only be detected using infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray spectroscopy or other specialized testers.
Natural diamonds can be completely colorless and colored diamonds are actually rare. However, most synthetic diamonds will have a slightly yellowish hue to them and color synthetic diamonds are easier to make than colorless ones.
Synthetic gem-quality diamonds are created using one of two different methods, which will create slightly different types of man-made diamonds.
One method is High Pressure-High Temperature (HPHT), which simulate the conditions that create natural diamonds. The HPHT method uses large and heavy presses produce high pressures and high temperatures to compress carbon material to create diamonds. HPHT, pinoneered in the 1950’s by General Electric (GE), is the first method developed to produce synthetic diamonds and is still the most widely used method today due to its relative low cost.
The other method is the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method, originally developed in the late 1980’s, uses a chemical reaction to rain carbon on top of a seed diamond to grow a real diamond layer by layer. The synthetic diamond is then separated from the seed.
Apollo Diamond, Tairus, Chatham, Adia Diamonds, Gemesis, New Age Diamonds and LifeGem are some of the laboratory grown synthetic diamonds currently available on the market. General Electric, Sumitomo Electric, and De Beers also make synthetic diamonds – but these diamonds are used for industrial purposes and not used for the jewelry business.
Here is an overview of these synthetic diamonds currently on the market: Apollo Diamond, Tairus, Chatham, Adia Diamonds, Gemesis, New Age Diamonds and LifeGem.
Find out about Diamond Simulants:
Man-Made Diamonds
If you are considering a man-made diamond as an alternative to a mined diamond for the center piece of an engagement ring, you have some very nice options available to you on the market. Even if you are only looking to buy a real diamond, it would be a good idea to educate yourself about man-made diamonds. The more educated you are about diamonds – mined or man-made – the easier time you will have in buying the best diamond for your money. Here is some information to help you decide on the type of man-made diamond that is best for you.
Man-made diamonds can be divided into two distinct categories: synthetic diamonds and diamond simulants.
Diamond Brands and What They Mean
With the breakup of the De Beers diamond monopoly, and the increased competition from other players like Argyle Diamond Mines from Australia, Ekati from Canada and the Russian United Syndicate, you will be seeing more and more marketing from De Beers and the other syndicates to convince the diamond buyers that their diamonds are better than their competitors’ diamonds.
Diamonds are one of the few products that simply cannot be branded. Even though there are different cuts, different grades, and different values placed on each and every diamond in existence no diamond can really be claimed as any specific brand – with the exception of man-made diamonds. A diamond is a diamond no matter where on earth it is found, who found it or how it found – brands mean absolutely nothing at all. A Canadian diamond is the same as an Australian diamond or an African diamond.
If a jeweler tries to convince you into paying more for a diamond because it is a specific brand, move on to another jeweler. Every diamond syndicate will be selling great diamonds, good diamonds and not so good diamonds. Don’t let the new marketing onslaught that is to come convince you otherwise.
No matter what company’s label is put on the diamond, every diamond buyer will benefit from learning the basics of the four c’s and be able to recognize the quality of the diamond they might consider buying.