What Makes Diamonds So Special?

Diamonds are special in the Western world because of several of their properties that makes them useful or beautiful. Their stunning value is a cultural phenomenon, however, there are places in Africa where diamonds were once so plentiful and seemingly useless, one could pick them up off the ground and toss them aside. The rest of the world, however, has found various important uses for the precious stones.

They are hard

As hard as nature gets, in fact. This makes diamonds useful for a whole host of industrial applications. It may be hard to imagine but there are saws and cutting materials in the world that have diamond edges that enable them to cut other hard items or diamonds. Needless to say these special tools are extremely expensive, but on an industrial scale, they are also extremely necessary.

They are beautiful

Diamonds tend to catch the light and sparkle in a way that no other stone can. There is a brilliance to their clarity that can not be replicated by man-made stones either. This sparkle has a tendency to catch the human eye - especially in women - and exude a sense of class.

They are rare

For something to have the unique properties of being extremely hard, extremely beautiful and relatively rare, naturally will make it very special as well. Diamonds can be fairly difficult to mine, and when you add to this the fact that most diamonds mined aren’t usable as gems due to imperfections, and those beauties you see in the jeweler’s case become even more rare and special.

Ultimately diamonds are made of the same material as a lump of coal and have their place in our civilization as a special gem because we have said so. Society’s finicky desires pay a large role in determining what items are given special status and which are not: for example, platinum is extremely more rare, useful and valuable than gold, yet gold outsells it at a tremendous pace and is a standard for beauty and expense in society. Why? Because we said so.