Comment by dingaling

> and aren't purchased for the same reasons

Yes, that's his point. Quartz watches have eaten the market for "I need a cheap portable time piece", like artificial diamonds did for "I need diamonds for tooling".

Both mechanical watches and natural diamonds have therefore been pushed into a niche market of posers and the easily-influenced, who buy them for different reasons than the mass market.

> Lab diamonds and mined diamonds are literally identical products.

No, mined diamonds are inferior for any industrial task due to their flaws and weaknesses.