I'm not so opposed to diamonds that I don't wear any, but I'm not a big fan, either. I've found myself explaining my position a few times recently, so I thought I'd write something down and get it all clear in my head.
Why not diamonds?
1. Diamonds aren't actually valuable. Gemstone prices are typically based on supply and demand. Diamonds are quite plentiful, which means that prices should be low. However, since many of the world's diamonds are controlled by the De Beers cartel, the supply is tightly restricted, resulting in inflated prices. Every time a new mine is found, De Beers tries to swoop in with a pile of money and buy it up so they can keep the newly discovered diamonds from flooding the market. There's also been some grousing about De Beers sabotaging efforts to create gemstone-quality artificial diamonds, but I don't know much about that. Anyway, the real value of a diamond becomes evident when the owner tries to resell it; as a rule he/she will be unable to recoup most of the original cost.
2. Many diamonds are mined in Africa, and thus have the chance of being "blood" or "conflict" diamonds. African diamonds are mostly mined in war zones and are often used to finance civil wars, in which thousands of people die. There is a process through which diamonds are supposedly certified as conflict-free, but it's unclear how reliable this certification really is. Australian pink diamonds are definitely untainted, but they're also hugely expensive.
3. Diamond popularity is based primarily on marketing. I prefer to form my own opinions as to what I like and dislike, instead of letting marketing campaigns dictate my preferences.
The history of diamond marketing is actually quite fascinating. In the 1930s, De Beers worked to establish diamonds as status symbols by giving large stones to movie stars and having them product-placed into movies. Eventually, they began to concentrate on marketing diamonds as required gifts in relationships between men and women. The famous "A Diamond is Forever" slogan was introduced in 1947, both to encourage consumers not to resell their diamonds (thus further restricting supply) and to convince them that diamonds were representative of eternal love. Before the 20th century, engagement rings were not necessarily diamonds; they were often sapphires, rubies, emeralds, or other precious gems. But, by the middle of the century, most American women were convinced that only a diamond engagement ring would do. De Beers then moved on to Asia, and by 1981, 60 percent of Japanese brides also received diamond engagement rings.
Having mostly won the battle for the engagement ring market, De Beers also embarked on campaigns for "eternity" rings, and more recently, three-stone "past, present, future" rings. The eternity rings were particularly clever; in the 1960s, De Beers was forced to purchase many small Russian diamonds, which were not suitable for the types of large-carat engagement rings that De Beers wanted customers to buy, so they had to invent a new product. Thus, "eternity" rings, just as expensive as engagement rings but using the surplus smaller stones, were created and marketed specifically for anniversaries.
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