I kept the engagement ring my ex bought with a 1 carat lab-grown diamond. What is it worth? DAN HATFIELD answers

My long-term partner asked me to marry him at Christmas a few years ago. Even though the relationship didn’t last, the ring he proposed with is still in my life.

He said I could keep it despite the rift in our relationship. I wonder how much it’s worth.

I’d like to sell it and as it’s Christmas this might be the best time to flog it.

It is a 1 carat lab-grown diamond and the color is F with VVS1 clarity. I’m told the quality is great so I hope it’s worth a decent amount of money. Ellie, via email.

Dan Hatfield, our regular appraiser, answers: When it comes to diamonds, I’m an unapologetic magpie.

I trained as a diamond grader in Antwerp – the capital of diamonds – and studied them in all shapes, sizes and colors.

Even now, as a pawnbroker who handles them daily, I never tire of their appeal.

They are all as unique as a snowflake and valuing them is as much art as it is science, but valuing them is not as easy as you might think.

It all comes down to the famous ‘four C’s’ which stand for the cut, clarity, color and carat;

1. Cut

This is something most people misunderstand. It’s not about the shape (round, oval, pear), but the quality of the cut: how well it is cut, faceted and polished.

A well-cut diamond bounces around lightly like a disco ball, giving it an irresistible sparkle. Unfortunately you didn’t share this with me so I’ll have to focus on the other c’s.

2. Clarity

This measures how ‘clean’ the diamond is of internal blemishes or inclusions.

You’ve done well here: your VVS1 clarity is near the top of the scale, just one step below ‘Internal Flawless’.

This tells me that your diamond is as perfect as many of us will ever see.

3. Color

The color scale runs from D (completely colorless) to Z (a not so beautiful yellowish tint).

Your diamond is an ‘F’ – still firmly in the ‘colourless’ camp. This is prime real estate in the diamond world.

4. Carats

A 1 carat weight is the ultimate crowd pleaser; big, bold and the size most people think of when they dream of an engagement ring.

If this were a natural diamond you would be right to pop the champagne right now, but your diamond has been lab grown which has a big impact on the price.

What is a lab-grown diamond?

Lab-grown diamonds are chemically and visually identical to a natural diamond. They shine just as brightly, and can fool even an expert in a display case, but the market doesn’t value them in the same way.

Natural diamonds are unique wonders created by intense heat and pressure deep within the earth, which can often be 3 billion years old. While lab-grown diamonds are made in machines.

When lab-grown diamonds first hit the market in 2015, they were touted as being “eco-friendly” and sold for around 90 percent of the price of their natural counterpart.

Celebrities like Emma Watson and Meghan Markle were spotted with them, and suddenly it seemed like lab-grown diamonds were the future.

If you had bought one back then you might have felt quite smug, the semblance of luxury without the astronomical bill.

But fast forward to 2024, the bubble bursts. Lab-grown diamonds are everywhere and we now know that they are not as environmentally friendly as once thought, due to the large amount of energy required to create them.

As more producers flood the market, prices collapse like a bad soufflé.

Research from global jewelry analytics firm Tenoris reported a 20 percent drop in lab product prices in 2023, and this continued into 2024.

To put it bluntly, lab-grown diamonds are a terrible investment. It’s a painful truth that I’ve had to tell too many people who thought they were smart when they first entered the market.

As we know, your engagement ring has a 1 carat diamond with the color F and a clarity of VVS1. If it were natural, this would be a beautiful gemstone, but because it was grown in a lab, it doesn’t have much resale value.

Looking at the current market, I estimate that you could sell your ring for around $600 and maybe even $1,000 if you could find the right buyer.

This may not seem like much for a whole carat, but it all comes down to supply and demand.

Due to the sheer volume of lab-grown diamonds on the market, prices are falling rapidly and they lack the history, mystique or limited supply that make natural diamonds so valuable.

My advice to you would be to sell it now as the market is flooded with buyers looking for gifts and Christmas is often a season full of offers.

In January, people’s focus will be on paying off their credit card bills instead of spending too much money on diamond rings, lab-grown or natural.

To get the most out of your ring, I would choose to sell it to online diamond buyers or specialist jewelry sellers.

Chain stores have overhead costs, which means they lower a bid on the amount they can buy it for to make a profit.

I’m not sure if you had an amount in mind and while it’s not the price a natural diamond of this quality would command, it’s still a nice little money earner in time for a very Merry Christmas.

I’m about to take a break to enjoy some festive cheer myself, so I’d like to thank all my readers who joined me for this Modern treasures column this year.

I’ll be back in 2025 with more valuations and money-making advice, so for now I wish you all a sparkling Christmas and a bling-bling New Year.