The financial crisis every year presents more and more interesting surprises to the diamond market. Last year, one of the main postulates of this business was almost shaken: diamonds and diamonds began to fall in price, and in fact the diamond is positioned as "eternal value", which does not become cheaper with the years. Now the world economy seems to be starting to recover, but ahead of the industry is another serious test, which it will face for the first time in its history: the diamond market is moving away from artificial regulation and becomes competitive.

One hundred years of monopoly

"The artificial market has developed historically," says Sergei Goryainov, an expert at Rough & Polished, "While large deposits in South Africa were not discovered in the 19th century, diamonds were mined accidentally on placers (for example, in India) and were therefore highly valued. Century it was a very expensive stone, a "stone of kings", inaccessible even to the top of the then "middle class." The most massive stone at that time was opal, the extraction of which was established in Europe. "

After discovering deposits in South Africa, it became apparent that among the precious stones diamonds are not even the rarest, but, on the contrary, the most common stones. People who dealt with this market realized that if they extracted the entire volume of diamonds and brought it to the market, they would immediately drop in price. So the idea of an absolutely artificial market with a monopoly price dictation was born. To do this, it was necessary to do three things: first - to get physical control over diamond deposits; The second is to get rid of competitors inside the industry; And the third is to "clear" the market, to make diamonds attractive for everyone, but at the same time to keep their price.

The "cleaning" of the market was carried out very elegantly: opal was attributed to negative consumer properties - in other words, it was announced that it brings misfortune and causes cholera. From cholera at a time when a few members of the royal family of Spain, who owned collections of opal jewelry, died very "in time". Diamonds and diamonds replaced the "unlucky" opal and became the most popular expensive stones in less than 10 years.

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