The History of Loose Diamonds

There has been a lot of talk lately about loose diamonds. With the popularity of hand crafted fine jewelry at an all-time high, more and more people are learning what they can about the process of creating jewelry and the materials that are involved. Part of the offshoot of that has been a news commodities market as people are looking at the gem stones and precious metals not just as items of beauty but also tools for investments. People are now taking money from more traditional interest bearing items-stocks and bonds, mutual funds, I.R.A.'s-and investing in the raw materials themselves. Many people will try to make you believe that this is something new, as if diamonds have always come already mounted in the jewelry. The fact is the history behind diamonds as things other than just jewelry goes back hundreds of years.

The first part of their story is the most shocking to people. Today people believe that diamonds come almost exclusively from South Africa with a small secondary source in South America. Actually, diamonds were first used on the Silk Road as far back as 300 AD. The diamonds were mined in Indian and traded in China, where people there would use them for many different purposes, decoration being only one small part. Because of hard diamonds are, they worked very effectively as cutting tools.

The trade route ran both directions out of India, and diamonds became more and more popular in Europe. Some of the uses there were similar to those that the Chinese were using, and some of the uses were a little more out there. People believed that diamonds had healing and restorative powers, so the wealthy would swallow them in order to feel better. (Think about that next time you accidentally drop a quarter in a sewer grate.)

By the fourteenth century diamonds were being recognized for their value by all classes of the population. In order to buy diamond, it became necessary to visit the local diamond markets that have been established in the major European cities. India continued to hold a monopoly on the mining of diamonds for several decades until a deposit was found in Brazil in 1725. One hundred and forty years later a dramatically larger find was discovered in South Africa. Large scale mining started five years later and so many diamonds were unearthed that the market quickly flooded, prices plummeted and other gem stones started to be favored. It wasn't until the middle part of the twentieth century and for simple words-"A Diamond is Forever"-that diamonds regained their rightful place.