>While the ring contains a mined diamond, it has quite a bit of sentimental value

If I said it once, I have said it a million times, if your SO insists on a diamond from the ground as opposed to a lab, say fine, but I am getting my shots flying to Africa and will mine it myself. It won't matter if you bring back a opaque brown rock, with 0 marketing your SO would wear it with pride and most others would be jealous when they hear the story behind it.

It goes hand in hand with your obtaining a stone from family and the sentiment of it. My Mom has 5 boys and my Dad gave her a ring with 5 diamonds, and she has made 1 available to each of us for an engagement ring, which she would replace with the birthstone of each son. As you say its not scalable, and no one ever marketed the idea, but the sentiment is extremely powerful.

I love the idea of some valley-esque tech nerd turning up in a hellhole African diamond mine and getting merc'd by child laborers over his iPhone.

I see where you are going, but honestly the generalizations are pretty sad.

You might be surprised of the acceptance of an outsider showing a willingness to roll up their sleeves and experience something real not just sip drinks on a beach resort, even if it is for a day or two. Similarly if you met a child laborer or former child soldier outside those conditions, odds are you would have no idea of their personal experience.

I have met many child refugees that have more Worldly experience than most adults, yet if I did not represent them in asylum proceedings and meet them while they were detained, they would have simply appeared as children in my eyes. I have been part of law clinics that represented torture victims from some of the regimes you have in mind. The child soldiers, much less the child laborers, are not mercing people for their cell phones.

If you are a reader, I might suggest two books: 1) The Evolution of Deadly Conflict in Liberia; and 2) Storming the Court.

> but I am getting my shots flying to Africa and will mine it myself. It won't matter if you bring back a opaque brown rock, with 0 marketing your SO would wear it with pride and most others would be jealous when they hear the story behind it.

That's a great idea, but I don't know of any place you could do that in real life. Diamonds can be very valuable depending on size, color, clarity etc. Diamond mines have heavy security around their miners to ensure a tiny little diamond doesn't go missing.

There is zero chance they'd let a tourist in.

Someone I know smuggled a diamond purchased in South Africa for their spouse and the diamond and story behind that were both well appreciated.

for most people what you describe is even more expensive and impractical than buying a mined diamond

Impractical, sure. But the average cost of a 7 day trip to Freetown, Sierra Leone is less than 1/2 the average cost of an engagement ring. $2,500 compared to $5,500 on average.

Then there’s time cost, fitting cost, other materials cost, are you a jeweler? if not, jeweler cost…

I was fortunate in this regard. My wife inherited her mother's wedding ring. When it came time for us to get married, we took that ring to a jeweler who mounted the diamond in a setting that my wife picked out. The ring has great sentimental value for my wife at a modest cost. We never had to have the conversation about a mined diamond vs a synthetic diamond.

My experience was different. I ended up going to one of the Shane Company stores on the west coast and the salesperson didn't push diamonds at all. She showed me damn near every red/pink sapphire in the store until I found one I wanted to present. And when it turned out my wife didn't like the color as much as I thought they bought the old stone back at full-price and sold us a new one in a color she loves.