Ash Cash: Turning Loved Ones into Diamonds

Grief is a funny old business. Who'd have thought people would pay good money to send their loved one's ashes into space, have them made into "legacy fireworks" or dissolved into ink for a memorial tattoo? The English expression "There's nowt so queer as folk" comes to mind. "Nowt" means nothing, "queer" means strange, and "folk" means folk.

The diamond industry is recognizing grief as a growth area. Customers can have the ashes of their loved one turned - or indeed their pet - into a lab grown gem that will last forever.  US-based company Eterneva last week said its first major round of venture capital financing had raised $10m, and was oversubscribed. Its diamonds have, says CEO and co-founder Adelle Archer, been helping families "transform acute grief into acceptance, and mourning into a celebration of life". The company has high hopes for the future, but the market for so-called "memorial diamonds" is already crowded. LifeGem launched in 2001, staking its claim as the first US company to perfect the process of extracting carbon from human remains. Since then, many rivals have joined the race, all offering a broadly similar service, with a broadly similar pitch and emotional appeal.  You will have your loved one with you and in your life at all times . . . one of the most beautiful and everlasting ways to remember your loved one . . . a memorable heirloom that will be treasured for generations.  That kind of thing.

To create such a treasure they typically require between four and eight ounces of ashes. They chemically isolate and purify the carbon as starter material for the lab grown diamond.  This is the tricky, time-consuming (and controversial) part of the process. The remains of bones that have been through a 1,800F (980C) cremation furnace can yield as little as 0.5 per cent carbon, so even getting the tiny amounts needed to start off a diamond can be a challenge. Some manufacturers top up carbon from the deceased with generic carbon.  Detractors claim that in some cases as much as 97 per cent is generic, making the personalized diamond a little less personal. The carbon recovered from the ashes is combined with a diamond seed to crystallize and grow using the high pressure high temperature (HPHT) process. From that point on the diamonds are cut, polished, graded and set just like ordinary lab growns. Everything's the same.  Except for price.

Bear in mind that Lightbox's mass-produced lab growns sell for $800 a carat, and prepare to splutter. These prices are for cut, colorless diamonds, (colored are cheaper) with no mention made of 4C grades. Multiply the Lightbox price by 20, and that's about the mark. Saint Diamonds, based in Atlanta, Georgia, charge $14,699 for a one-carat stone and $21,299 for two carats.  LifeGem's melee (0.10-ct to 0.19-ct) cost $2,999 each. The largest size they offer, 0.90-0.99-ct is $19,999. UK-based Heart in Diamond charges $17,295 for a one-carat stone. The Swiss company Algordanza charges $22,935 for a one-carat stone. Eterneva's one-carats cost $16,000. It produces larger stones than many, up to three-carats, for $50,000.

Some readers will embrace the idea of a memorial diamond as a beautiful, timeless and poignant way of remembering a loved one. Others will find the whole thing ghoulish and macabre. Sentiment aside, these lab grown diamonds, with minimal re-sale potential, are seriously expensive.  The added value is nothing more than the link, via microscopic fragments of cremated bone, to a loved one. And plenty of people will happily pay for that.  As I say, there's nowt so queer as folk.

Have a fabulous weekend.