Diamonds are expensive not just because of their beauty and resilience, but also in large part because of the fact that they are very rare and difficult to extract. So in recent years, the diamond mining industry, led by the corporate giant DeBeers, has been shaken up by the emergence of the viable commercial production of synthetic, gem-quality diamonds.

For over a century DeBeers has controlled the world’s supply of diamonds. But now that diamonds can be created cheaply, in potentially high quantity, and with a quality that is equal or greater than the quality of natural diamonds, the diamond industry finds itself in an uncertain flux.

DeBeers has spent a lot of money providing major jewelers with sophisticated machines that detect the minute differences between manufactured and minded diamonds. Some issues arise from the fact that there aren’t all that many major differences. The differences that are there tend to indicate to the higher purity of lab-made diamonds.

One of the main differences between the synthetic and natural diamonds is that, in nature, colored diamonds occur rarely and are therefore highly priced. In the lab, however, colorless diamonds are harder to produce, and colored diamonds are easier and cheaper to make. As a result you can buy a synthetic colored diamond of equal quality to a natural diamond for a fraction of the natural diamond’s price.

Also, man-made diamonds have distinct growth patterns and usually fewer inclusions than mined diamonds, which helps jewelers distinguish somewhat cleanly between the two, albeit using high-tech inspectional equipment.

Gemesis and Apollo, the two main producers of synthetic diamonds today, however, say that their intent is not to pass off their diamonds as natural. They openly disclose their diamond’s origins to jewelers. Their hope is to offer synthetic diamonds to the public as alternatives to natural gems that are of the same quality and can be consumed in tandem with mined diamonds.

Proponents of the diamond mining industry insist that it is the history of natural diamonds that makes them valuable. Jef Van Royen, a senior scientist at the Diamond High Council was quoted in 2003 as saying that, “If people really love each other, then they give each other the real stone. It is not a symbol of eternal love if it is something that was created last week.”

If you are looking in San Diego at diamonds and want help finding the difference of a mined diamond check http://www.davidandsonsjewelers.com/san-diego-jewelers to find out more.