Lab-Grown Diamonds Come Into Their Own

(The Abrasives Union) - Around the corner from the famous Diamond District in New York City, David Weinstein sorts through some envelopes on his cluttered desk. All of them are full of synthetic diamonds. "I deal with diamonds all day long, for three decades," says Weinstein, executive director of the International Gemological Institute, a nonprofit research institute. "To me, diamonds aren't anything spectacular. It's hard to get me to say, 'Wow!' But lately he has been impressed by certain diamonds — those created in the lab. "These are all laboratory-grown," he says, unwrapping diamonds and lining them up inside a folded piece of white paper. Under a bright light, he points out how colorless they are, and how, to the naked eye, they're indistinguishable from diamonds that took millions of years to form deep within the earth. Lab-grown diamonds command about 1 percent of the global market today. But investment firms predict that market share could rise to as much as 15 percent in the next few years.