Rare Gems And Things You should Know
Most people think that when the rarest gems are mentioned that diamonds are the gems that fit that category. Actually diamonds are not the rarest gems at all with the exception of certain color variations. Before 1870 the production of diamonds amounted to only a few pounds a year. At that time diamonds were truly rare. Then something happened, huge diamond mines were found in places like South Africa and diamonds began to be dug out of the mines in tons and not pounds. The mine owners feared that diamonds would become semi precious stones so they merged everything diamond into the De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. and took control of the market and led us all to believe that a diamond was a rare stone by controlling the market. In order to not be so noticeable, De Beers went by other names in other countries. Then science stepped in and diamonds were created in the labs of the world and now it is being said that a good lab diamond can not be told from a mined one. How long can the rare diamond fantasy continue, only time will tell.
Ruby Another so called rare gem is the ruby. It is a variety of the mineral corundum and as we all know it is pink to red. The same mineral also produces sapphires. When a ruby is used for jewelry, it almost always is given a heat treatment first. Rubies used to only be found primarily in the Upper Myanmar in Burma. Now it produces very little and production has moved to Central Myanmar. Large ruby deposits have now been found in Greenland and Kenya. Some rubies have been found in Montana, North Carolina and South Carolina. Deposits have also been found in Tanzania, Madagascar, Vietnam, Nepal, Tajikistan and Pakistan and ruby mining is also taking place in Thailand, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, which also produces many pink sapphires. Synthetic rubies have been around since 1837 and there are different processes that can produce them. Are rubies rare? You can get a nice big lab grown one for under $100 and that would be far over priced.
Jadeite Are there really any rare gemstones? It just so happens that there are. When a person is asked what is the rarest gem, it is usually said to be Jadeite. Most of the time this gem has the color green in it. It could be apple green, leek green, greenish white, or any other variation of green. It could also be white, blue and even violet and have colorless sections. In Spanish it was called by piedra de ijada, which means stone of the side, because it was believed that if rubbed against the side of a person with kidney stones it could cure them. It can be found in Costa Rica, Guatemala and in California. I bet you are now wondering how rare the stone is and how much it would sell for? In a recent auction a necklace of 27 .5 mm jadeite beads sold for 9.3 million dollars. Is that rare enough for you? To illustrate what a good job De Beers has done in keeping the diamond market high, the second most valuable gem is a diamond. It isn't the normal diamond that one would think of, you know the type that you see in an engagement ring, but a red diamond. A red diamond is a diamond that is a purplish red in color. It is without a doubt the most expensive of all the diamonds and is dug out of a mine called the Argyle mine in Australia and even that mine only produces a very small number of them. A red diamond sells for millions of dollars. The going price is between 2 million dollars and 2.5 million dollars per carat. I don't think that you or I would ever see one, they seem to be the domain of the ultra rich. Another very valuable gem is Serendibite. This stone is mined in Sri Lanka and is a cyan color. While different gemstones have different components, this stone is unusual become one of its components is oxygen. Only 3 gems stones that have been faceted and made of this material exist. You would think that this would be the rarest of gemstones wouldn't you? I guess being number 3 isn't too shabby either. While the smallest stone of the 3 was sold for $14,300 per carat, it is estimated that today the stones are worth between 1.8 million dollars to 2.0 million dollars.
Garnet Since I didn't know much about gemstones, I used to think that garnets were nothing special. Boy was I wrong. Garnets are stones that are found in many different colors. If we are looking for the rarest garnet, it would have to be the blue garnet. The blue garnet was only discovered a little while ago in the 1990s in Madagascar. It was also found right here in the good ole US of A, Turkey and Russia. The color of the stone changes according to the light. It is sort of a glue green in the daylight, but looks purple in incandescent light. This is because the gem contains high amounts of vanadium. A 4.2 carat blue garnet sold for 6.8 million dollars in 2003. At one time the rarest gem was believed to be Painite. The British discovered it in Myanmar in the 1950s. The discoverer was Arthur C.D. Pain and the gem was named after him. He was a British mineralogist. The reason that it was believed to be so rare was that before 2005, only 25 examples were known. Today there are more, but it is still a rare gem. It sells for between $50,000 to $60,00 per Carat. There are natural gemstones that are cut and polished, but not altered in any other way. These are the stones that most of us can't afford. Then there are Genuine gemstones. They are real, but not natural anymore since they have been treated in some way to make them look better. You should know that some gemstone treatments are not permanent while others are. Some of the treatments are: Heat and Radiation Heat and radiation are used to change or enhance the stone's color. Diffusion deepens the stone's color. Oil and wax enhance the stone's colors by filling in fine surface cracks and blending them away, this is a temporary fix. Laser drilling removes inclusions and makes the stone look clearer. We shouldn't think that we get a stone that came from the mine and was put directly into jewelry. Remember this the next time you buy jewelry and remember many stones are poor quality and even large ones of this type are considered mine castaways. |
