Much less rare since man began producing perfect ones over the last 60 years...

I recall reading a decade ago the only flaw with the man-made gems was that they were, indeed, flawless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond

If looking only at jewelry-quality diamonds, there are millions of carats of diamonds mined per year, while there are generally thousands of carats of diamonds grown per year. In that regard, lab-grown white diamonds are much more rare than mined diamonds. It will take billions of dollars in capital to have a diamond growing facility with enough capacity to output more jewelry-quality diamonds than a single large diamond mine (though I suppose that is less than one WhatsApp, so is within the realm of possibility).

The Wired article about synthetic diamonds from 2003 was full of hype and misconceptions. Most all synthetic diamonds grown today are not flawless, and that is not by design. However, in the last couple years lab-grown white diamonds have become much more available in normal jewelry-quality ranges: http://d.neadiamonds.com/lab-created-diamonds/White-Diamonds

^ Disclosure: I'm an owner of D.NEA and have been selling jewelry-quality synthetic diamonds for many years.

Thanks for the additional input, EF. The disparity is much larger than I initially thought. In time, as methods & costs are refined, perhaps the ratio will shrink and reverse.

I also believe that is the article I was referring to... IIRC the 'white' conundrum was the big impediment to mass production... much like the recent breakthrough in LED tech's progression to white light.

Edit: Great site! Very informative... http://d.neadiamonds.com/white-diamond

Kind of rare, but not enough to justify the sort of price premium they demand, at least according to [citation needed]. Heck, it's probably the same source(a) the Grandparent post is thinking of.