Ryan Roth didn’t necessarily mean to buy a diamond. He was scrolling on TikTok when one of the platform’s mysterious live-auctions appeared 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.”
The Rise of the TikTok Shop Auction
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.
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.
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. 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.
Why Consumers Are Addicted to the Gemstone Rush
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.
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. “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.’”
For retiree Tracy, a three-carat, cushion-cut lab-diamond that she had fashioned into a ring is now among her prized possessions. She had just beaten stage-four cancer and wanted to commemorate her recovery. “I almost cried because I never in a million years thought I would personally own a three-carat diamond,” she says. “I’m not Taylor Swift. I’m not Selena Gomez. I am a regular person who wanted something beautiful to celebrate me, and through these auctions, I was able to do that.”