Cheyenne Roundtree
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Getty Images Ryan Roth didn’t necessarily mean to buy a diamond. He was scrolling on TikTok when one of the platform’s mysterious live-auctions sprung up on his feed. A seller in an empty room was hawking an impressive, lab-grown diamond, encouraging those lurking in the comments to place a bid.
“I clicked the button by accident, and it just went through,” Roth tells Rolling Stone. “Then all of a sudden, I see the Amex charge, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I own this now!’ I just spent $700 on TikTok Shop, which is a crazy amount of money to spend on TikTok Shop.”
Then it happened again. Scrolling in the back of an Uber on the way to a party, and slightly tipsy, Roth found his way into another live auction. This time a diamond was going for $94. Another click later, he became its owner.
TikTok diamond auctions have since led him down a rabbit hole. “It’s been my hobby the last two weeks,” Roth says, mentioning that he has about 10 more gems currently on the way to him. “This isn’t actual gambling, as much as it does feel like it, because you’re getting something in return. You’re not just throwing money to the house.”
Roth isn’t alone. After posting a video earlier this week asking if anyone else couldn’t stop purchasing diamonds via TikTok, his comment section quickly flooded with more than a thousand replies from people across the country, all confessing their little secret.
Roth says he was surprised by the overwhelming response. “I’ve posted way more viral videos in my past, and I’ve gotten more texts [about the diamond post] than on my birthday,” he says.
@ryanthomasrothtiktok shop has become an expensive hobby #diamondauction #tiktokshop #loosediamond #labgrowndiamond
♬ original sound – Ryan Roth
When TikTok Shop launched in September 2023, it was a place to buy lip liner and phone cases straight from a user’s For You Page. Then it began to diversify. In addition to a standalone Shop page, the app rolled out a live-auction feature where independent sellers could put up anything from designer handbags and vintage clothes, to rare coins, baseball cards, and even precious stones.
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The gemstone auction premise is simple: click into any jewelry page that is live-streaming, and there you will find a variety of shiny objects ranging from dainty .03-carat stones to blinding 14-carat boulders. Like what you see? You can start bidding at the tap of a button. High-energy club remixes blare in the background as a chipper auctioneer entices bids during a 10-to-30-second countdown, creating a heart-pumping, gamified shopping experience.
The prices are all over the place. Because the majority of the diamonds and gems being sold are created in labs, they are significantly cheaper than mined, natural stones. Some auctions start as low as $1, while higher quality, larger lab-grown diamonds can creep north of $2,000. However, typical sales seem to hover between $100 and $500.
Not all auctions are created equal. Some storefronts offload cheaper moissanite jewelry, while others have pre-set, massive pavé diamond cluster rings, and the auctioneers have a range of approaches. There’s the professional type, who highlights a gem’s specs and reminds the live feed of the stone’s typical retail value. Another treats potential customers as longtime friends. “I want all my besties to win!,” a woman in all pink exclaims while showing off a one-carat diamond cross necklace. Some don’t bother with the soft sell. A woman selling a set of murky-looking topaz earrings practically begs people to bid. “C’mon guys, hit that button,” she urges. “Go. Go. Go. Go. Don’t let me down. Come on, go.”
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In the name of journalism, I had to get in on the action. After hanging around some lab-grown diamond auctions, nothing was cheap enough to convincingly expense as “work research.” So, I switched to a gemstone seller. Lurking in the chat for a few minutes, I commented that I was curious about lab-grown pink sapphires.
Two minutes later, I was shown a two-carat oval pink sapphire. An slip of my thumb meant I was the sole bidder on the $50 gem and within 30 seconds, I had won the auction, my card was charged, and I had a confirmation email in my inbox. My loose gem is expected to arrive by next week.
It was intoxicatingly, and dangerously, easy. By the end of the day, I somehow had bought two .25 lab-grown blue emerald-cut diamonds for $30 each. I reasoned I could turn them into a set of earrings.
Larissa Rolim, a podiatrist from Dallas who is part of the gem-buying scene, described these auctions as the “Gen Z’s QVC” with an instant dopamine hit. In the span of two months, she’s copped five diamonds and plans to create matching necklaces for her and her sister. “It’s very addicting,” she laughs. “I feel like some folks could get in trouble because it’s so easy to just ‘click, click, click, click, click.’”
“I feel like Thanos from the Avengers movie — I have all these little gems,” frequent bidder Tiffany says. In a span of a month, she says she’s purchased roughly 50 different lab-grown and natural diamonds, sapphires, rubies, amethysts, and other beautiful, sparkly objects from such auctions.
“It’s affordable, honestly,” Tiffany says, sharing that she budgets roughly $100 a week to fund her newfound hobby. “It’s fun and it gets your adrenaline pumping because you feel like you’re gambling.”
It is, however, somewhat alarming how uncomplicated it is to get sucked into buying something. Like Roth, four people say their first diamond purchase was something of an accident, either by inadvertently making a bid or their shockingly low offer ending up winning the auction.
“It was completely unintentional,” says Azjani of how she came by her one-carat, lab-grown pear-shaped diamond for $93. “I thought [the auctions were] fake. I was like, ‘Okay, let me click on it once or twice because the price was still low.’ I happened to win it. I was like, ‘Oh, I thought somebody else was going to bid more.’”
Everyone who spoke for this article waved off pre-emptive chastisements for doling out cash on jewels when cost of living is on the rise. “Inflation’s affecting us all,” says Rolim. “I feel like in a situation where you’re trying to get an anniversary gift, a birthday present, you can get a very nice gift for significantly less than you would have normally.”
