Are Minecraft Diamonds Realistic? ˗ˋˏ💎ˎˊ˗

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:05]Think back to the first time you struck diamond in Minecraft.

[00:00:10]Even though you might not remember the very first time you found them, I can bet that most times you come across the ore even now, you still get a little bit excited or we will learn about diamonds, both in Minecraft and in the real world, and see how they differ. Understanding diamonds may not make you better at finding them or better at Minecraft in general, but knowledge is power, and maybe your friends would be so impressed by some of these facts.

[00:00:38]Hi, I'm Millie, and I am by no means an expert geologist, but I do like researching and learning about various topics, and I hope I can share some of what I found today. Okay, let's get into it.

[00:00:52]Diamonds were added to Minecraft in 2010 in version 0.31, and they were actually added as emeralds, but it seems like this was just a placeholder name or something.

[00:01:04]Either way, this name was quickly changed to diamonds, and emeralds would be added later as villager trading currency.

[00:01:12]You can find diamonds at Y levels below -6ish and optimally between -50 to - 64. A common method to obtain them is the classic strip mine. And I've seen my friends perform a sort of claustrophobia inducing trap door method, and I can't say that's for me. But when the caves were revamped in the caves and cliffs update, it made a more natural style of mining arguably more efficient, exploring large caves and finding diamonds just out in the open. Although this is a little bit more difficult if you're not prepared for combat and or falling. But if I am playing alone, I have to say that making your own mine is a lot comfier.

[00:01:56]Diamonds in almost all cases are required for beating the game. You need diamond to craft a diamond pickaxe to then mine obsidian to access the Nether.

[00:02:06]From here, you can get blaze rods to craft eye of ender. And well, you probably know the rest. Diamond also used to be the strongest armor in the game, but with the introduction of netherite in 1.6, 16. You could now farm for hours and maybe maybe find enough ancient debris to then make a Netherite ingot and then find and duplicate a Netherite upgrade template using even more diamonds to then upgrade your pre-existing diamond armor. And then after all of that, you could be blasted into the abyss by the Ender Dragon and lose it all anyway. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.

[00:02:46]Diamond also has plenty of other uses aside from armor and tools. They can make diamond colored trims for said armor, diamond blocks for gordy beacon pyramids, enchanting tables, and most importantly, the jukebox. Now, this is already such a neat parallel I wanted to talk about. The reason Minecraft jukeboxes require a diamond in their recipe is because some turntables, even historically, actually use a diamond tip on their record arms. the part you lower onto the disc. Records are delicate, as are the grooves, and diamonds prove to be more durable than metal, giving both the disc and the arm a longer lifespan.

[00:03:26]But yeah, I guess it is a bit annoying that you have to use one just to hit pigstep in game.

[00:03:42]So, diamonds have lots of uses, and I think the design is really nice. I love the color and the sort of teardrop shape. But now we get into the real matter. Diamonds in real life. And the first question we must ask is, well, what is a diamond? It's carbon. That's literally it. Carbon is comprised of one atom and is thus an element. It's in all living things. And carbon actually makes up 18% of the human body's mass. But diamonds specifically are carbon at their most concentrated and purest form.

[00:04:18]The individual atoms form coalent bonds with other atoms by sharing electrons in turn creating a giant coalent tetrahedral structure wherein there are no free electrons. This is what makes diamonds so strong their composition.

[00:04:34]Similar carbon materials like graphite too have a large coalent structure but the bonds are like layers and they're not connected by other bonds and there are free electrons within the structure thus making it a far weaker material.

[00:04:51]So where are they found? Well, diamonds are found naturally formed about 100 miles underground in the earth's mantle.

[00:05:00]This is one of the layers which forms the interior of our planet. And the mantle makes up 84% of Earth's volume and is around 1,800 m thick. Because of how expansive this layer is, there are differences depending on the depth.

[00:05:16]Temperature can vary by thousands of degrees depending on how close you are to the Earth's core, and the physical state of the mantle can range from solid to viscous. Diamonds though are formed closer to the crust in areas where temperatures can still exceed 1,000° C.

[00:05:34]This high pressure, high temperature environment compresses the carbon atoms together to create the gem we know. The diamonds are then brought to the surface through volcanic eruptions which create diamond pipes otherwise known as kimberlite pipes named after the first pipes that were found in Kimbley, South Africa. But diamonds can be found across many continents and are mined in various different countries today. These kimbleite pipes support the flow of magma through the earth's layers and towards the surface. They cool and solidify, leaving behind what we would recognize as a diamond vein. The thing is, these dramatic eruptions, which led to the pipes, happened millions of years ago. And so, it is true to say that the number of natural diamonds present today is finite. However, despite all of this, they are absolutely not the rarest gem around, and a lot of the scarcity is just market manipulation.

[00:06:34]But more on that later.

[00:06:39]So after the diamonds are mined, not all of them meet the standards required to become say jewelry which requires only the best. The diamonds are mined and extracted from surrounding material.

[00:06:51]They are then cleaved or soared and then cut into shape using another diamond.

[00:06:57]Diamond sits at number 10, 10 being the highest on Friedrich Mo's material hardness scale. And you can only cut the world's hardest naturally occurring material with itself. Makes sense. All of this results in the diamonds we recognize today. And the classic shape that you may associate with the stone is called the round brilliant cut. But there are a multitude of other fancy options. And it seems Moyang prefers the pear-shaped look.

[00:07:26]So then what are the standards for assessing diamond quality and thus market value? Robert M. Shipley, founder of the Gemological Institute of America, the GIA, created the four C's: color, clarity, cut, and carrot. You might have heard the term carrot before. And even though it sounds like the carrot, the vegetable, it actually comes from carob seeds. In ancient times, where they didn't have, of course, electronic scales, diamonds were weighed against these seeds. And these seeds specifically were chosen as they have an average weight of 0.2 2 g. This unit of measurement was later standardized as a carat in 1907 and adopted a little later by various countries. So this essentially means the heavier the diamond, the more valuable. Well, we have to account for the other three C's.

[00:08:18]Clarity assesses any inclusions in the diamond. Basically, are there any stray minerals, grainy textures, or particles?

[00:08:27]Cut looks at how the stone reflects light and how it sparkles. It also assesses the balance and symmetry of the cut and the overall craftsmanship.

[00:08:37]Finally, the color. The color with the highest regard in the industry is actually the absence of it. A white diamond, the ones you might think of when you think of diamonds, is just a clear colorless gem. The GIA also created an official color grading system. And on the lower end are diamonds with a more naturally occurring deeper brown and yellow tone. And at the top are glass-like diamonds with little to no color at all. Diamonds that have a different color, say pink or blue, are graded slightly differently. They are known as fancy colors. Whilst the blue toned diamonds we find in Minecraft were likely chosen for their visual clarity in game, there is some truth to it.

[00:09:19]Natural diamonds can be blue with a 0.02% 02% chance and this is usually due to the presence of the chemical element boron during their creation.

[00:09:34]So why are diamonds so coveted amongst collectors especially when they are not the rarest precious stone? Well, as it turns out, the diamond industry is controlled only by a few groups. And for a long, long time, the Debeas Consolidated Mines Limited had the monopoly. They're a British company operating out of South Africa, and they used to produce half of the world's diamond supply. Nowadays though, this is down to about 30%. And they even stockpile diamonds from other countries, only releasing a limited number for sale each year. And when you control the market like this, you control the availability and the prices. However, what really makes this cartel so successful is their shockingly effective marketing scheme. Ever heard of the phrase, "A diamond is forever?" That was Debeas.

[00:10:25]Well, the NWA advertising agency hired by Debeers. Prior to the 1940s, engagement rings were, sorry, but far more interesting with much more unique and varied stones being used like turquoise and rubies, and they generally were much simpler and had smaller stones. But diamonds quickly became the new staple for commitment with 80% of engagement rings in the US having diamonds by 1950. And that notion persists even today. Just searching up images of engagement rings will have you looking at almost only ones with diamonds. And even I have heard that it's expected by some for one partner to spend 2 months salary on an engagement ring. I guess the more expensive the ring, the more you love them, right?

[00:11:13]Not only were people encouraged to buy the most fancy expensive diamonds that they could, but owners of those diamonds were then encouraged to pass them down as family heirlooms and not to sell them. This restricts the secondhand market too, meaning that Debeas can further limit the amount of diamonds in circulation, giving them more of a monopoly. There is also the matter of conflict or blood diamonds. And this is a topic that can be talked about extensively, but I'm not going to go too much into it here. But these are diamonds that are mined, usually with human rights violations, to both adults and children and then sold to finance rebel movements against legitimate governments in countries at war. To try and counter this, the United Nations created the Kimbley process. This is also where that definition comes from.

[00:11:58]And this aimed to track a diamond's journey to market, ensuring it was conflict free. And now there are estimates that 99.8% of diamonds presently on the market are in fact conflict free.

[00:12:15]Not all diamonds need to be mined. Lab grown diamonds and similar diamondl looking gemstones are a fair substitute and in some ways even superior. The traditional process of lab growing a diamond involves subjecting carbon to the same high pressure high temperature conditions found in the mantle. This is called HPHT. There is also a newer process called chemical vapor deposition CVD. This uses a vacuum chamber to crystallize carbonri gas onto a diamond seed. This is a thin piece of pre-existing diamond. Depending on the size of the desired diamond, both methods take some time to produce the gem, ranging from a few days to weeks at a time. It is near impossible to tell the difference between a lab grown diamond and a natural one, as they are chemically identical. But scientists do have methods of assessing which is which and through which specific method they were created using in the lab. And the funny thing is Debeas the known Scrooge McDark of diamonds actually created their own brand of machines capable of identifying whether a diamond is natural or not because most of their money comes from natural diamonds.

[00:13:28]Diamond looking gemstones are popular too. Cubic zirconia is an entirely man-made gemstone. It has a hardness rating of 8.5, so not as hard as a diamond, but it has a superior sparkle, no inclusions, and is colorless.

[00:13:45]But it's not a diamond, and that's what counts. It doesn't matter if it's visually superior and better for jewelry because there is so much calculated marketing behind diamonds that make them the most sought after, even in Minecraft. Although most of the diamonds you find in Minecraft, despite the nice color, are used for non aesthetic purposes, as with most diamonds that don't make the visual cut in real life.

[00:14:13]I can't say I have any diamonds myself or aspire to own any, but they still have pretty interesting lore. I didn't even really touch on the earlier history of diamonds, but they pop up in documentations a lot. Royals also love them and in researching one name came up frequently, the Hope diamond. It's a blue tone diamond weighing almost 45 carats. It's named after Lord Henry Philip Hope who purchased it in 1830 and it was actually only available for purchase after the French Revolution where it was stolen from the royal family and sold years later. Originally, I think it came from India. It was even owned by French King Louis I 14th and known as the French Blue. But after it was stolen and sold, it was passed on through various people through the years with some people even saying that it's kind of cast and that whoever owns it is brought misfortune, but I'm not sure about that. Regardless, it now lives at the Smithsonian Museum in America.

[00:15:14]Okay, and I think that's about it. So, thank you so much for listening and you can leave a like if you like this video and even subscribe to learn more. My other content is also Minecraft related.

[00:15:25]I do have two videos also talking about stuff from Minecraft in real life. I have uh spruce trees and axelottals as of now, but the uh the other contents like long form forever world sleepy playthroughs. Either way, again, thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time.