Most People Think Moissanite Is “Fake”... We Wanted to See If That’s Actually True

Here's the part the old school jewelers will never tell you.

Moissanite has one of the more fascinating origin stories in fine jewelry.

In 1893, French chemist Henri Moissan was studying rock samples from a meteorite crater in Arizona. Inside the fragments, he found tiny crystals so hard and so brilliant that he initially believed they were diamonds.

They weren’t.

They were silicon carbide, an exceptionally rare mineral that barely forms naturally on Earth. Moissan later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the mineral took his name.

That is why moissanite is sometimes called a “gemstone from the stars.” But the stones used in engagement rings today are not mined from meteorites. They are grown in controlled lab environments, which makes them more consistent, more accessible, and far more suitable for fine jewelry.

It is a real gemstone, not a "simulant" in the cubic zirconia sense.

One thing worth knowing before you buy: unlike diamonds, moissanites have no universally recognized grading institute. The GIA and IGI grade diamonds. There is no GIA equivalent for moissanite. Some sellers will hand you an official looking certificate from a lab you've never heard of, and those documents are mostly marketing theatre. What matters far more is the seller's reputation and whether they offer any type of Lifetime Warranty on their stones. Skip the certificate hype and judge the seller.

I checked with Anna Wilson, a GIA-trained gemologist (who has spent 18 years evaluating engagement ring stones) before writing this, partly because I needed to hear it from someone who handles stones every day, not from a brand. Her summary, almost verbatim: "It's not a knock off. It's its own category. People keep trying to compare it to a diamond, but optically, it's a different conversation entirely."

That sentence is what flipped me from "fake" to "fascinated."