De Beers plans to charge $200 for a quarter-carat, $400 for a half and $800 for a carat, another sharp break from natural stones that rise exponentially in price the bigger the diamond gets. (Courtesy of Lightbox) 
 
 De Beers, the diamond giant that for years has promoted gemstones as pricey and precious, said it will begin selling man-made diamonds that cost about a tenth of the price of a mined gem. “This is something you might buy for a best friend or for a Sweet 16.” 
 
 The shift to synthetic is an unexpected move for the world’s largest diamond miner, which for decades has relied on the perceived scarcity of mined diamonds to drive up values and has railed against synthetic diamonds as one of the biggest threats to the industry. The line of man-made diamonds “may not be forever, but is perfect for right now,” Bruce Cleaver, chief executive of De Beers Group, said in a statement. ‘Not Special’ 
 
 “Lab grown are not special, they’re not real, they’re not unique. Unlike imitation gems such as cubic zirconia, diamonds grown in labs have the same physical characteristics and chemical makeup as mined stones. The company’s Element Six business, based in England, is the world’s largest supplier of lab-grown diamonds for drilling, mining and semiconductors. (At the Diamond Foundry, a California-based company that counts actor Leonardo DiCaprio among its investors, for example, one-carat synthetic diamonds start at about $3,500 — more than four times what Lightbox plans to charge.)
– De Beers' diamonds won't come exclusively from mines anymore. In a significant about-face, the company announced Tuesday it is getting into the synthetic diamond game with Lightbox, its new man-made diamond brand that will offer full carat stones from roughly $800 beginning in September. That price point is essentially the point: While one of De Beers' genuine one carat diamonds costs about $8,000, Bloomberg reports similar lab-made ones currently run about $4,000. That means synthetics made by De Beers' rivals (among them Warren Buffett's Helzberg's Diamond Shops and Leonardo DiCaprio-funded Diamond Foundry) will be extremely expensive in comparison and the gulf between synthetic and real prices will widen, making the two categories more distinct. CNN notes it's a big change for a company whose execs had pledged to never sell lab-grown stones; it even created a machine whose purpose is rooting out such fakes. It justified the change by citing consumer demand, with CEO Bruce Cleaver calling Lightbox "affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now." He called a spade a spade: "Lab grown are not special, they're not real, they’re not unique. You can make exactly the same one again and again." Lightbox's GM similarly painted the stones as low-brow in comments to the Washington Post: "This is something you might buy for a best friend or for a Sweet 16." The diamonds will be available in white, pink, and blue and made in a facility in Portland, Ore., that De Beers plans to sink nearly $100 million into.