A Reuters article on a shortage of the mineral zircon predicts that cubic zirconium jewelry will go up in price because prices for zirconium have soared. It seemed odd to me since I hadn’t given much thought to what raw materials are used to create cubic zirconium; I figured it was something plentiful and cheap. Ironically you can make diamonds out of all sorts of plentiful carbon-containing raw materials, though the process is much more expensive. Zirconium pricing is unlikely to ever surpass the controlled rarity of real diamonds, but synthetics are in the realm of possibility.