Mineral Mondays #15: Some Of The Rarest Gems On Earth

Some of the Rarest Gems on Earth

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We're taking a detour this week. Instead of focusing on 1 mineral we're going to talk about 5 of the rarest gems in the world and diamonds are not part of that list. These may not rank as the most expensive or the actual rarest by quantity, but they constantly make the list of the 10 rarest gemstones in the world. Over the next five weeks I am going to be going down the list of each gem and introducing them to you more in depth so stay tuned! On with the show!

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#5 Benitoite - My personal favorite.

My prized specimen "The Twin Stars"

Benitoite is a very rare and unique gem only found in 3 places on earth, California, Arkansas and Itoigawa, Japan. Let me add a caveat here, while benitoite is found in Japan and Arkansas, it is too small to be cut into gems. The only gem producing region is in California, in the Diablo mountain range in San Benito County.

Some defining characteristics of benitoite are: shape, color, refractive index. It's shape is ditrigonal dipyramidal, two 3 dimensional pyramids on top of each other with the 3 ends sliced off. The color ranges from deep, cornflower blue, to pink to clear. It's refractive index, surpasses a sapphire and can rival that of a diamond. This is probably the most important trait of benitoite because when you have a higher quality cut stone it will shine and sparkle like only a diamond can. Price per carat $4,000.

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#4 Red Beryl (Red Emerald) - My Second Favorite.

A small specimen from my collection

Red Beryl up's the ante a bit. It is found in only 2 known locations, Utah and New Mexico. The former really being the only place that produces gem material and 99% of it coming from 1 location, the Ruby Violet claims in the Wah Wah mountains, Beaver county. It's said for every 150,000 diamonds mined, 1 red beryl crystal is mined.

Red Beryl only forms small crystals which further add to it's value. Since the crystals are smaller not as many large, carat weight gems can be cut. Like most of the other beryl gems it forms as a hexagonal shaped crystal. It's color is red with only variations of how light & dark of a red. A quality red beryl can fetch up $10,000 a carat!

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#3 Taafeite - Discovered By Chance

Source - GIA

Taafeite is a beautiful, violet/red/pink gemstone. It is only found in Sri Lanka, Tanzania and China. Even when it is found it is in very small quantities. The gem forms hexagonal like beryl most likely due to it's beryllium content. There is not much information on Taafeite and what little there is, including how it was discovered by chance, I would like to save for it's own Mineral Monday's feature. Price per carat $2,000 - $3,000, and up to $35,000

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#2 Alexandrite - From Russia With Love

Source - Wikipedia

Alexandrite is a special gemstone. It has a unique color changing property that allows it to appear an emerald green color in daylight or fluorescent light and a ruby red color in incandescent or candle light. While it was originally found in Russia, new sources have been discovered in Tanzania, Madagascar, Brazil and Sri Lanka. Even with the new discoveries it is still very valuable and rare. Price per carat $15,000 - $70,000.

#1 Painite - The Former King

Source - Caltech

Painite until recently held the title of the "rarest gemstone in the world". Up until 2004 only 2 cut gemstones were known to exist. That changed recently as sources were discovered in Myanmar and Borneo. Even so, only a few thousand specimens have been found to date making it extremely rare.

Painite is not a very attractive gem because of it's dark red/brown color, however some beautiful specimens have been cut from the material. Price per carat $50,000 - $60,000.

Some other extremely rare gems that I didn't list but will get to next year, musgravite, grandidierite, and jeremejevite.

Thanks for reading!

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Next Mineral Mondays #16: Benitoite

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