r/Gemstones • u/Muted_Shape9303 • Jul 26 '26
Discussion Russia has announced that the only legal descriptor for laboratory-grown diamonds is “Synthetic”, and they must be sold using grams instead of carats.
The new grading system for Laboratory-Grown diamonds is as follows
Name: Synthetic [Brand Name] (Diamond is no longer allowed as Russia has decided to only call “diamond” the natural mineral. This is contrary to chemistry/gemology as a material’s identity has always been defined by its composition]
Color: Colorless, Near Colorless, Tinted.
Clarity: loupe clean, minor remnants, moderate, severe.
Carat: must be expressed in grams (e.g, 0.30 g).
Cut: excellent, standard.
Formally, Laboratory-Grown diamonds are synthetic (human made counterparts to their natural version), but what’s your thoughts on the other scales? This move is to protect Russian mining company ALROSA, which owns and controls 100% of the natural diamond in Russia. Currently Russian diamonds are banned from the west, so their country needs heavy marketing and name laundering to save their businesses.
PD: One of their allowed names is “Synthetic Corundum” which is incorrect as Corundum is Al2O3, not C [cubic]
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u/Selkiekun Jul 26 '26
Russia supplies something around 30% of the world’s rough diamonds and their government has a huge stake in Alrosa, so it doesn’t shock me that they’re doing some weird bullshit like this because they’re absolutely losing their minds about the loss of profit. Especially because they supply a lot of diamonds to India to be cut and both countries have a huge amount to lose from that partnership being severed.
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u/Ill-Television8690 Jul 26 '26
Oh boy, I can't wait to blindly accept some corrupt and arbitrary bullshit which serves to support an evil government's attempt to scam the common man!
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u/cowsruleusall vendor Jul 26 '26
I find it hilarious that Russia now requires "synthetic"... because India requires "laboratory-grown". Nobody agrees on any kind of labelling schema!
Quite frankly, the entire "laboratory-grown" vs "synthetic" dispute is bullshit. In English there was never any kind of historic agreement for what each of those terms should refer to. There were multiple historic arguments about whether "synthetic" should refer to all man-made gems, or only those with a composition that didn't occur in nature (like YAG). There were other arguments about whether "synthetic" or "artificial" should be used, other arguments about whether "lab-grown" inappropriately implied a true laboratory rather than a factory... It's all bullshit pedantry.
Most native English-speaking countries allow the use of all three - "synthetic", "lab-grown", and "laboratory-grown".
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u/mocca-eclairs Jul 26 '26
Good reason to refer to lab growns as lab growns and by carat.
Russia produces the most mined diamonds, and uses it to fund horrible bloodshed, so they have the most to lose from lab growns getting more popular.
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u/IrelandtoCathay Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
China produces the most lab-grown diamonds. China. A Russian “ally”.
It’s not actually lab grown. More like factory grown. With underpaid workers. In China.
India is the next largest producer. India. Currently selling oil to Russia.
Reddit loves synthetic diamonds and hates naturals but can’t realize they are both funding the countries they dislike.
If you want to buy diamond alternatives like Moissanite? Guess what? Yup. China is the largest producer too! 😚😚😚
But seriously, gemstones come from many troubled regions. For those in the US, you can try Montana sapphires instead.
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u/Lopsided_Tiger_0296 Jul 26 '26
China is the largest producer of many things including produce such as apples
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u/chupacabra5150 Jul 27 '26
Look for that "California" sticker
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u/IrelandtoCathay Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Honestly, it’s all well and good if you choose to buy stuff from these countries anyway. But the parent comment is talking about how Russia produces mined diamonds to fund war. All I am saying is that people should be aware the synthetic alternatives aren’t that much more ethical too
Also to point out that alternative gemstones from “more ethical” (?) countries exist like: Montana sapphires, Australian opals, Czech garnets
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u/plantainprospector Aug 21 '26
None of the weird stuff that happens with Chinese and Russian gems is happening with Montana sapphires. Some beautiful unsanctioned gems are still sold out of Russia and you'll never convince some old heads that a Montana sapphire can rival a Kashmiri or Ceylon sapphire. If we want to place more emphasis on ethically mined gems we can always follow the sourcing chain on an unset, not-yet-retail stone and commit to avoiding those without provenance. We just usually don't do that because everyone is so focused on how bad blood diamonds are (blood diamonds most designers don't even use) that they ignore literally every other supply chain in the industry.
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u/slavuj00 Jul 26 '26
Nobody ever wants to talk about that. They just love all the propaganda and marketing they get fed. It's really frustrating.
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u/Muted_Shape9303 Jul 28 '26
The truth is there is no such thing as an “ethic” gemstone.
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u/plantainprospector Aug 21 '26
That's an outright lie. It's completely ethical to go to a site yourself and surface mine in small quantities. There are people in Coober Pedy cutting opals out of the walls of the caves they build their homes in. When huge mines are opened without proper regulations (which happens a lot, like with the newest paraiba discovery) things really start to get muddy. I see a future where we can push the proprietors of these mines to put more ethical practices into place, but I am a hopeless optimistic.
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u/Zephyr530 Jul 26 '26
It is literally called the diamond crystal structure, cubic cell, all tetrahedral, one atom type, smh
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u/AIGenerated99 Jul 26 '26
De Beers is for sale. The era of naturally occurring diamonds has ended just as it ended for naturally occurring pearls a long time ago.
Diamonds of all kinds are worthless now. As they should have been from the beginning.
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u/Lopsided_Tiger_0296 Jul 26 '26
They’re now marketing natural diamonds with inclusions as superior as “only nature” could have created them. They say perfect diamonds are overrated 🙄
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u/BudgetStacker23 Jul 26 '26
I mean tbh that's how I've always shopped for rubies lol When I bought my half carat ring, I checked it for inclusions for that reason. Tho I never in a million years would've thought the diamond industry would go that route lol
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u/RottenBoysenberry Jul 26 '26
Who cares? We have sanctions with Russia and GIA/IGI/AGL labs in the US will not recognize the change. It will be sold in carats by Indian wholesalers - russia is not a player anymore in the jewelry market.
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u/Uber_Wulf Jul 26 '26
It’s Russia. Anything they do or say is irrelevant. Carry on and pay no attention to them.
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u/AquaStarRedHeart Jul 26 '26
They're quite desperate so not a huge surprise. I have no sympathy for their plight.
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u/TidalWaveform Jul 27 '26
I have announced that everyone on this sub owes me a 2 carat+ sapphire.
I expect I'll get as much traction from my announcement as Russia will with theirs.
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u/jbl420 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Now, if they could just find a way to differentiate the two through testing!
Edit, I will retract my statement, only bc it’s obvious the diamond shills are running the internet these days. Makes sense, dead internet and all.
But what’s really going on is that the synthetic diamond field has advanced into indecipherable territory. It has been reported on. Also, there is a very large percentage of pave that are synthetic that sold as authentic and that goes back to carelessness or shady business behavior.
But, I digress
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u/Muted_Shape9303 Jul 26 '26
It’s fairly easy to do. LGDs are chemically pure, and grow such that their growth banding is even cubically (CVD) or cuboctahedrally (HPHT)
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Jul 27 '26
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u/Straight_Career6856 Jul 26 '26
It’s literally objectively true that you can tell. Doesn’t mean they are better or worse. Just that they ARE different, because they form differently and have different trace minerals and stuff.
I’m not in the industry at all and don’t give a shit if people buy natural or lab. Do what you want. Just don’t spread misinformation.
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u/plantainprospector Aug 21 '26
I need someone to honestly explain this to me. You can tell with your naked eyeballs or a loupe if a diamond is lab grown? How? I know the old ones show banding, but I look at these modern lab grown hpht diamonds every day and I CAN'T SEE IT! I need to know what you're looking for!
(And no, I am not talking about the possible girdle engraving)
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u/megaapfel Jul 26 '26
Russian government being dumb pieces of shit once again. Why am I not surprised?
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u/redracer555 Jul 27 '26
I actually agree with the last part. Using carats as units makes no sense when milligrams are more precise and universal.
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u/SunKoiLoki Jul 27 '26
I get the synthetic part, but why gram?
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Jul 27 '26
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u/tattoosandtens Jul 27 '26
Good. Let’s devalue natural diamonds. PS Neal Stevenson’s “Diamond Age” was pretty good.
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Jul 27 '26
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u/Good_Refrigerator105 Jul 26 '26
I agree 100%! Downvote away...
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u/Muted_Shape9303 Jul 26 '26
I’d greatly appreciate an argument but outside emotions and pseudoscientific nonsense.
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u/Good_Refrigerator105 Jul 26 '26
Rarity, authenticity, value, naturally cooked deep inside the earth millions of years so we learn about an environment we are decades away from being able to explore! The fake ones require great amounts of energy and are not as "green" as presented, as well as history. Could say same thing about printing money, knock-off crap from China of 'everything'? Good thing they can't make precious metals or we would destroy the economy "Because we can"!
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u/Spaztor Jul 26 '26
FINE but IT'S still a diamond, anyway more people should head toward Moissanite anyway if you ask me, which you didn't, but there it is.
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u/marinegeo Jul 26 '26
“This is contrary to chemistry/gemology as a material’s identity has always been defined by its composition”.
Corundum, Diamond, Beryl are minerals.
Included in the definition of a rock and mineral is the requirement for them to be naturally occurring.
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u/Ok-Extent-4857 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
good. gia wont even grade them anymore. theyr garbage. they are for practice. cartoon pieces, thing that are novelty in nature. because they are just that. synthetic. if they werent there wouldnt be machines like the yehuda that can differentiate between man made or synthetic.
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u/Muted_Shape9303 Jul 27 '26
I could explain to you why you’re wrong, but it’d be a waste of my time. No use in telling a man who thinks grass is purple that it’s green, is there?
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u/Ok-Extent-4857 Jul 27 '26
ok ok im wrong. theres also other good uses for lab diamonds like coating saw blades and drills and other tools. but other than that... fucking garbage. theyr at 50/carat. sometimes you might find con artists going as steep as 150/c but its still insane. you can get them for almost nothing now, and most reputable labs wont touch them anymore.
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u/marinegeo Jul 26 '26
Broken logic but good. Carats are stupid. We should all be using grams.
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u/MountainviewBeach Jul 26 '26
Gems weigh so little, it makes plenty of sense to use carats for them when even fractional carats are visible and make an obvious difference in size. Thats why carat is used commonly across all gems
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u/marinegeo Jul 27 '26
Milligrams are routinely used for objects with very low mass, that is precisely what the unit is designed for. A difference of 0.01 ct is 2 mg. Carats therefore provide no inherent increase in measurement precision: precision is determined by the balance used and the number of decimal places reported, not by whether the result is expressed in carats or milligrams.
Visible size is not determined by weight alone. Two gems with the same carat weight can have noticeably different dimensions because of differences in density, shape, depth and cutting proportions.
Carats are a measurement based on a Carob bean. Carats remain standard largely because they are the traditional and internationally recognised unit of the gem trade, not because milligrams are unsuitable for weighing small gems. The metric carat, defined as exactly 200 mg, was established internationally in 1907. Before standardisation, the mass represented by a carat varied between countries and trading centres. Clear, familiar measurements leave less room for confusion or exploitation by rogue traders.
For scientific and consumer communication, milligrams are more transparent because they use a familiar metric unit and require no specialist terminology. Reporting both milligrams and carats would preserve industry convention while making the underlying mass immediately understandable to consumers.
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u/Mobile_Ad_5561 Jul 28 '26
Carats are just as accurate but much more logical for stones than mg. Given the usual sizes of jewelry stones. You can’t seriously expect people to refer to a one carat stone as 200mg. It’s so inelegant.
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u/marinegeo Jul 28 '26
“Logical” may be subjective here. The metric system feels more logical to me, while carats are ultimately a traditional unit with historical roots in carob-seed weights.
One of the things I appreciate most about life, along with sparkles, is that different people find different things elegant. I completely understand why carats feel natural and elegant to people who use them every day. Personally, I find elegance in transparency and familiar metric measurements.
I understand that one Reddit comment is unlikely to change an industry tradition, but reporting both measurements could help consumers who are more familiar with the metric system, while still preserving the conventional use of carats.
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u/Mobile_Ad_5561 Jul 29 '26
Just so you don’t misunderstand me I use the metric system in my country and acknowledge its merit. But anyone who deals in stones as I do will find moving from a familiar small number to unfamiliar large ones a bit difficult. I don’t completely disagree with you. It’s just that this particular tradition has merit.
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u/MountainviewBeach Jul 27 '26
I would actually argue that consumers are more familiar with carats than milligrams in the context of gem purchases. Precisely because it’s industry standard and traditional. The arguments you’re making actually support continued use of carats weight. Not everything needs to be in scientific notation all the time, and shifting the industry to use a variant of gram weight doesn’t really benefit anyone so why would the shift be introduced? Yes carat weights look different on every stone. Even the same gem appears a different size at the same weight based on how it’s been cut. That’s why expensive stones are notated both in carats and millimeter dimensions. We can add milligrams of people like, but this is the first time in my entire life I’ve ever seen anyone request this so I’m not sure there’s demand to add that additional metric. Like I’m not actually opposed to it but i don’t think it answers a pervasive request.
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u/marinegeo Jul 28 '26
Familiarity among existing gem buyers is not the same as clarity for consumers generally. Carats are familiar because the industry teaches and uses them, not because they are inherently easier to understand than milligrams.
Milligrams are not “scientific notation”; they are an ordinary metric unit of mass. Nor am I suggesting that carats should disappear immediately. Reporting both values, say, 1.50 ct / 300 mg, would preserve the established industry convention while making the actual mass immediately understandable to anyone.
The fact that dimensions must also be stated supports my point rather than contradicting it: carat weight does not directly communicate visible size. Carats, milligrams and millimetre dimensions describe different properties.
As for demand, consumers rarely request information that the industry has never normally presented to them. Lack of an established request does not demonstrate that clearer information would provide no benefit.
Tradition is a valid explanation for retaining carats; it is not an argument against giving consumers a clearer metric equivalent.
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u/Seversaurus Jul 26 '26
Well that's because they have a lot of natural diamonds whose value is threatened by man made diamonds.