Recently, the world’s largest diamond producer, De Beers, once again announced a reduction in diamond prices. Since reaching its peak in 2022, the diamond industry has been undergoing a prolonged period of deep adjustment due to factors such as the cooling of global luxury goods consumption and the rapid popularization of cultivated diamonds. Several real cases of mainland Chinese consumers have shown that diamond rings purchased at high prices ten years ago have significantly depreciated, with individual cases experiencing depreciation rates as high as 99%.
As the world’s largest diamond producer, De Beers recently lowered the prices of rough diamonds once again. On January 20, at the first routine diamond auction of the year that started this Monday, De Beers significantly reduced the selling prices of rough diamonds weighing 0.75 carats or more. Due to the adoption of a unified pricing method this time, the specific extent of the price decrease is not yet transparent, with industry insiders estimating a bargaining space of about 10% to 15%.
The soft market demand is an important background for this price cut. The RapNet diamond price index shows a significant drop in the prices of small consumer-grade diamonds in 2025, with a full-year drop of over 20% for 0.5-carat diamonds.
Notably, changes in diamond consumer behavior are becoming increasingly apparent. Several cases have shown that the traditional perception of diamond rings as “preserving value” is being shattered. Diamond rings purchased at high prices ten years ago are now fetching significantly lower buyback prices, with some small-carat diamonds having almost no buyback value. In contrast, the price of gold has risen by over 400% in the past decade, creating a stark contrast.
A woman from Anhui who spent 18,000 yuan on a diamond ring ten years ago shared on social media that she can now only fetch a buyback price of 180 yuan, a depreciation rate as high as 99%.
Citing reports from the Daily Economic News and Jiemian News, ten years ago, a woman named Li from Chengdu spent 100,000 yuan on a one-carat diamond ring, and now she has consulted several recyclers, with the highest appraisal not exceeding 30,000 yuan.
This is not an isolated case. In Xichang, Sichuan, a 34-year-old woman found that two wedding rings she bought for 14,000 yuan ten years ago now sell for less than 200 yuan combined.
“Absolutely no one will recycle broken diamonds, unless at a very cheap price,” said a jeweler in the industry. Generally, only large-carat (one carat or larger) natural diamonds qualify for recycling. However, people are now discovering that diamonds bought at high prices in the past do not actually hold their value. The usual market rate for buybacks is between 40-60% of the original price, depending on the quality and brand of the goods.
As a comparison, in January 2016, the price of Lo Fong Cheung gold was around 290 yuan per gram, while on January 20, 2026, it had reached 1456 yuan per gram, an increase of over 400%.
In fact, the trend of significant declines in both diamond sales volume and prices has been ongoing for several years. In September 2023, Chinese media reported that in the previous year, certified diamond prices had dropped by 35% to 40%. Among them, diamonds ranging from 50 points to 3 carats were hit the hardest, with sales volumes also decreasing by 30% to 35%.
Additionally, the increasingly lower prices of cultivated diamonds are severely squeezing the living space of natural diamonds.
An employee at a store specializing in the sale of cultivated diamonds in Nanyang, Henan, stated that the clarity, color, and other indicators of cultivated diamonds can fully match natural diamonds and are difficult to distinguish with the naked eye, but the prices are only one-fifth or even lower than natural diamonds.