You may have heard that diamonds aren’t that rare, but is this true?
Well, let’s first look at what we mean by rare and distinguish and separate what we mean by ‘rare’ and what we call rare, from what we are actually looking at in the terms of supply and demand.
In a very literal sense, if we look at the number of diamonds as a percentage of the mass of planet earth then, yes, they are rare, though according to a study published in 2018, not as rare as we thought.
Obviously, we can’t put the planet on a scale, but the earth is estimated to weigh around 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kg, with the total diamond weight estimated to be some 26,000,000,000kg
What’s maybe more important than the mass of the diamonds on Earth is what form they take and can we get at them?
There are, for instance, 72,000 tons of diamonds in the German town of Nordlingen, that formed when an asteroid struck the area some 15 million years ago. Unfortunately, they are all less than 0.2mm in size and have no value, despite there being a lot of them.
The majority of the diamonds described in the 2018 MIT report are some 90-150 miles beneath the surface of the earth so, at present, we can’t get at them and maybe never will. Consider that the deepest diamond mine in the world, Russia’s Mir diamond mine, is only a third of a mile deep, and this is the second-largest hole humans have ever dug!
So even if diamonds aren’t quite as rare as we thought, the amount we can actually access is minute and supports the high price they command. So what proportion of the diamonds on earth are big enough to be worth digging up and how many of them can we reach?
DEMAND FOR DIAMONDS
The demand for diamonds is constantly changing and is affected by all the factors that any other product is affected by. So, it’s this demand that can have a big impact on how ‘rare’ we consider diamonds.
Think about it this way: in 1866 when diamonds were first discovered in South Africa, the population of the world was approximately 1.2 billion, with only a tiny fraction having the wealth needed to buy gemstones. Today, the world's population is close to 7.7 billion, with millions of people having enough money to buy diamonds. In that time, many pockets of diamonds have been discovered and mined, however, no more diamonds have been naturally created. This means demand has increased and supply has also increased, but the literal amount of diamonds on the planet has stayed the same.
SO OF THOSE DIAMONDS THAT HAVE BEEN MINED, HOW MANY ARE VALUABLE?
Diamonds have two primary uses: in jewellery and industrially. Generally, diamonds that are used in jewellery are bigger and have fewer flaws than diamonds that are used industrially. It’s because of diamond hardness - they are the hardest naturally occurring mineral on Earth - that they are used in industry, often as cutting tools and as countries have developed heavy industry as well as technology that uses diamonds demand for these types of diamonds have increased, though today many diamonds used in industry are synthetic.
DEMAND FOR GEM-QUALITY DIAMONDS
Demand for gem-quality diamonds, those not used in industry, but in jewellery has increased over the years. Only about 30% of the diamonds mined can be used as gemstones and only a small fraction of these are over 5mm in size when mined.
