Diamonds have traditionally been set in engagement rings. But, as consumers become more informed about the diamond cartels, which seek to keep the price of artificial diamonds high, blood diamonds, which illegally finance oppression and wars in the Third World and the confusing compensation to the Buying them among the five Cs of clarity, reduce, color, karat, and cost, some people are beginning to consider alternatives.

However, if you love the look of diamonds and want something like a diamond for your engagement ring, there are plenty of fake diamonds to choose from and you can do much better than moissanite.

Moissanite hit the market in the late 1990s. At the time it was hailed as better than the real thing! In testing, it seemed that even trained jewelers could not distinguish it from genuine diamonds. It looked ravishing and yet it was a fraction of the cost of a real diamond! It was surely the miracle stone of a cash-strapped lover!

Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, moissanite is a poor imitation of real diamond.

The reason it apparently fooled so many jewelers originally was simply because they had never encountered anything like it before. At the time, jewelers used a heat probe to categorically identify a fake diamond, such as cubic zirconia. At that time, only real diamonds were known to possess thermal conductivity, so only real diamonds could pass the heat probe test. However, moissanite has a nearly identical thermal conductivity to diamond, which is why it also passes the test. Although jewelers were able to see that it looked very different from real diamond, because it passed the heat probe test, they were forced to identify the odd-looking stone as a genuine diamond.

Now its properties are widely known, no jeweler is fooled. Moissanite and diamond just look too different. And you can even see three differences for yourself!

1. Diamonds refract light. Moissanites refract it twice. This means that as the light bounces around the internal surfaces, it causes an apparent duplication of the posterior facets of the stone. To anyone looking closely, the inside of the stone looks blurry as in double vision.

2. Gemstones get their fire when they scatter light. Moissanite scatters light extremely well; almost 2.5 times better than real diamonds and makes them sparkle with an intense brilliance. This beauty made them very popular in the early years. But as the stone became more popular, the “disco ball effect” identified it as a fake diamond, and it is now believed to be cheap and sticky.

3. Moissanites fluoresce in natural light, giving them a grayish or greenish appearance. This is a serious inconvenience and the reason why you should never put them on an engagement ring, unless you never intend to wear it during the day.

Although it is beautiful in its own right, but if you want to save money and buy a rhinestone engagement ring, there are much better options.