Fake diamonds making a real impression

By Margaret Webb Pressler
The Washington Post

	PRNEWS This necklace and earring set was made with Gemesis' cultured yellow diamonds. The set is valued at $17,500. Gemesis' products run about 35 percent less than real diamonds.
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This query has gone unanswered since the first synthetic diamond was manufactured in the 1950s. Beautiful stones have been created, but nothing that couldn't be identified as man-made.

Until now.

Even as natural diamonds flew out of jewelry stores for Valentine's Day, two well-financed start-up companies were rolling out manufactured diamonds that can be distinguished from natural ones only with extremely expensive equipment. The man-made gems aren't easy or cheap to produce, but they're the kind of nearly flawless, sparkly stones that the jewelry industry — especially DeBeers SA, which controls about 60 percent of the rough-diamond market — long has feared.

"Everybody's worried because if you look at the price of rough diamonds since 1948, they have never declined in price," said Kenneth Gassman, a diamond-industry analyst with Rapaport Research. "Why? Because DeBeers has done a great job of propping up the market. Now you come in here and suddenly you have synthetic stones that look like the real thing. Now what happens to prices?"

The answer could become clearer over the next year or two as these "cultured" diamonds become more widely available. The yellow diamonds being made by Gemesis of Sarasota, Fla., now are for sale in a handful of jewelry stores nationwide. The nearly colorless, flawless white diamonds from Apollo Diamond of Boston should be available by fall.

Both companies insist they aren't trying to replace mined diamonds. Rather, they expect to find a market niche alongside real diamonds, offering consumers more-affordable alternatives.

"We think we'll have an additive niche in the market, and that people will add to their collection of jewelry," Apollo Diamond President Bryant Linares said.

The best-known synthetic gems are simulants — stones such as cubic zirconia or Moissanite that look like diamonds but are altogether different. They may be lovely in a piece of jewelry, but a jeweler or gemologist can tell the difference even if the public can't.

What Apollo and Gemesis are producing, on the other hand, are real diamonds using high-tech methods.

"These are chemically, optically and physically identical to mined diamonds," Linares said.
 
He said he expects his diamonds to sell for up to 35 percent less than a natural stone.

Gemesis President Carlos Valeiras said man-made diamonds also are environmentally friendly. "It really covers a lot of bases, from both value and price point all the way to social and environmental concerns," he said.

What worries jewelers is how hard it is to detect these stones.

Gemesis' diamonds, which can be identified by sophisticated labs run by groups such as the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), carry a laser inscription. Without an inscription, a typical gemologist would be unable to tell the difference, Valeiras said. Apollo still is working with GIA on creating a method of identification.

"The cooperation we have from Gemesis and Apollo will help us to characterize the stones and make sure we can identify them and get information out to the trade and to the public," GIA President William Boyajian said.

But the fact that these stones require expensive equipment to be identified raises the possibility that unscrupulous jewelers could sand off inscriptions and pass off a man-made gem as natural. Others in the industry worry that the technology could fall into rogue hands or overseas firms that don't have the same commitment to disclosure.

Still, these diamonds are difficult and expensive to make. Both companies are hoping much of their financial return will come from the high-tech world, where diamonds are coveted for their high conductivity and can outperform silicon.

First, though, the companies must produce a lot more diamonds.

Gemesis uses a high-heat, high-pressure system to convert a piece of refined graphite into a yellow diamond in about 80 hours. Apollo uses a chamber of carbon vapor that slowly attaches, atom by atom, to a thin wafer of diamond, gradually building up to a near-perfect stone.

No one knows whether buyers will consider these stones just as good as those that come out of the ground, although some experts believe consumers always will value natural diamonds more highly.

"It's not going to be a Mother Nature diamond, and I don't think it's going to affect the market one bit," said Lynne Loube, a gemologist based in Bethesda, Md.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company