The world diamond market is indeed manipulated to keep prices high.
Supposedly DeBeers possess and keeps tons of diamonds off the market to maintain prices.
All the middlemen don’t help the price, either. They are unnecessary.
When I bought a diamond for my wife’s wedding ring I went over to some (friend of a friend’s) lady’s house and she almost dropped it down her sink!
It is 1.05 carats. I will use it to buy a bag of Doritos after our coming economic implosion.
Almost 30 years ago Hubby bought me a loose 1 carat diamond. My jeweler says it is a very very nice diamond. He paid a little over $1k for it. About 10 years ago the original setting I had it in finally fell apart and I found a jeweler on ebay from NY that sold me a very nice setting with 2 carats of smaller diamonds for it. I also found an estate ring on ebay with 2 carats of diamonds for almost nothing since no one else bid on it. So all in all about 5 carats in the set. It’s a very nice ring set that overall cost almost nothing.
A couple of years ago I was packing to visit family back east and looked down and my ring with the 1 carat was gone. I flipped out, looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. Thought it was gone. Weather made me cancel my trip but I had already shipped my box of clothing and it was at cousin’s house. I started looking for another ring since mine apparently was gone. Everything even close to it was about $15,000! So I gave up. Had decided I’d just buy a replacement at a pawn shop and had already started looking.
Eventually cousin sent my box home and when I opened it my ring was almost right on top. It had travelled to Arkansas and back. lol Anyway, took it to another jeweler to have the 2 rings welded together and he told me the set was worth at least $20,000! We paid less than $3k for the set.