The Chocolate Diamond Myth

The most common color variety of naturally occurring diamonds are brown. Brown diamonds were typically considered worthless for use in jewelry, not even assessed on the diamond color scale, they were mostly used for industrial purposes before the development of the Argyle diamond mine in Australia in 1986. After the Argyle mine was discovered marketing strategies changed making brown diamonds popular gemstones due to the supply coming from the Argyle mine, which produces 1/3 of the world’s naturally occurring diamonds of which 80% are brown. In the year 2000, a fine jewelry corporation trademarked the term chocolate diamond and they have since gained popularity.

A journalist who wishes to remain nameless uncovered, by chance, what the CEO of a major diamond supply company and his counterparts think about chocolate diamonds. The nameless journalist was out to lunch with a client at an upscale restaurant in downtown New York with a digital recorder in his pocket that he had mistakenly left on. When he returned home later that evening he played back the recording and discovered that he had captured a conversation between Charles Baumgold, CEO of London based diamond corporation Le Veen, and one of his peers, whose name has not yet been uncovered. The following is a transcript of Baumgold talking to his peer:

You know it’s crazy, twenty years ago we couldn’t give these damned stones away, for heavens sake we were getting rid of them wholesale to be used in drills, and knife sharpeners, stuff like that, but since we started calling them chocolate diamonds and have upped the ad game a bit the peasants have been buying them like candy thinking they’re getting something special. I say, I wish we had the reach thirty years ago that we have now when we discovered that huge mine full of mud stones, we would’ve made a couple of billion more, but such is life. I swear you can dress up anything with a clever name and a nice marketing strategy behind it and the peons will go crazy for it, useful idiots will buy anything when they’re told to.

Since the release of the tape Charles Baumgold has gone on record as saying “all news articles concerning anything should be approved by a government assigned proofreading force,” and that he was merely talking to his friend about tea.