If someone invested $100 in gold in 2011, today they’d have $216, more than double in return. The profit on Silver is not as lucrative, but you’d still have $122 today. But the same hundred dollars invested in diamonds would be worth $30 today.
Bloomberg’s Diamond Standard Index, which tracks investment-grade stones, just hit its lowest level in over 20 years. So, are diamonds becoming worthless?
Factories Can Grow Diamonds. Nobody Can Grow Gold.
Diamonds’ attraction as an investment asset has been washed away because of laboratory innovation.
Lab-grown diamonds are made of the same carbon as mined ones. A certified 1-carat lab stone now sells wholesale for $76 to $87, data from analyst Edahn Golan shows.
Shoppers followed the price. Among US couples married in 2025, 61% picked a lab-grown engagement stone, The Knot found. Now, reports claim Walmart sells half-carat lab-grown earrings for $12.
Walmart is selling real diamond earrings for $12.
— Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta) October 12, 2026
Not a typo. Half-carat lab-grown diamonds, same carbon, graded by the same labs that grade the stone in your engagement ring. A jeweler can't tell them apart without a machine.
And that $12 price tag is why the company that… https://t.co/BdASP6FC6o
BeInCrypto found lab-grown studs from third-party sellers on Walmart’s site, with some retailing at significantly discounted prices.
“Diamonds are about to be absolutely worthless,” noted one user.
Notably, De Beers kept prices high for decades by tightly controlling supply. Now the company is for sale. Valued at nearly $13 billion in 2011, it may fetch about $1 billion.
Diamond giant De Beers in talks for $1B sale to consortium – fraction of previous worth due to plummeting demand: report https://t.co/iJU1aokSDK pic.twitter.com/MVPjKVC5Bz
— New York Post (@nypost) July 29, 2026
Gold and Silver Crashed in 2026. They Still Beat Diamonds.
Gold trades near $4,157, about 23% below its January peak. Silver, at $60.46, has nearly halved since topping $116.
That selling tracked rising US bond yields, not new supply, as the recent gold and silver sell-off showed. China’s central bank even made its largest gold purchase since 2023 in September.
Are Diamonds Really Becoming Worthless?
The data says not yet. Diamond analyst Paul Zimnisky told Marketplace that owners selling a stone might recover about half of what they paid.
“For most people, I wouldn’t look at it as an investment,” he said.
Natural prices also ticked up in September, Rapaport data shows. Golan called recent gains an early sign of stability, not a recovery.
Gold has one global price and a supply no factory can add to. A diamond now has neither.
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