According to this report on Bloomberg.com, Gemesis is planning on selling 1 million carats worth of man-made diamonds next year.

The major Diamond mining companies like De Beers, Anglo American and Rio are getting a little nervous. They undoubtedly come out with a marketing campaign to squeech sales of “fake” diamonds. Here’s what John Teeling, founder and chairman of African Diamonds Plc. (a Dublin-based mining company in which De Beers has a stake) says.

If you meet a woman that you are going to spend the rest of your life with and have babies with, are you going to give her a diamond made in a lab in Pittsburgh or are you going to give her the real thing?

Teeling doesn’t seem to be worried about it. But I own shares in Anglo American (AAUK) which owns 45% of De Beers so I am!

Synthetic diamonds cost about 70% less than real ones and you need a machine (which was developed by De Beers at a cost of $17 million) to differentiate between the two.

If your fiance or wife couldn’t tell the difference would you sneak in a synthetic? Maybe justify it by paying the same price but getting a rock the size of your big toe?