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Here are ten of the WORLD’S RAREST and MOST EXCLUSIVE GEMSTONE SPECIES,
listed in no particular order except that the most expensive one is at the
bottom. I’ve excluded stones that are too soft to wear, hazardous, or just
plain uninteresting. Some of the following are surprisingly affordable,
simply because the general public doesn’t know or care about them and thus
demand is relatively weak.
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 PAINITE has in years past
been described by the Guinness Book of World Records as the rarest gem
mineral. As of early 2005 there were eighteen known specimens, all numbered
and accounted for. Specimen No. 5 has been faceted into
an oval and weighs 2.54 carats. Painite is pink to red to brown in color,
very strongly pleochroic (showing different hues from different angles) and
it fluoresces a lovely green under short wave UV. It comes from Mogok and
Kachin State in Myanmar and was named after its discoverer, British
gemologist Arthur Charles Davy Pain.
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 SERENDIBITE,
not to be confused with serandite, is a cyan colored stone that comes from
Sri Lanka. It boasts an unusually complex formula consisting of calcium,
magnesium, aluminum, silicon, boron and oxygen. So far there exist three
faceted specimens of 0.35 carats, 0.55 carats and 0.56 carats. The first two
were discovered by rare stone specialist D. P. Gunasekera and purchased by
the late Prof. E. J. Gübelin of Switzerland. The larger of those two is
shown to the left; the smaller was sold for about $14,300.00 per carat. The
name comes from the old Arabic term for Sri Lanka, Serendib, as referenced in
The Sixth Voyage of Sinbad and elsewhere.
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A faceted 3-carat purple gemstone from Magok, Myanmar, was discovered to be a
POUDRETTEITE in 2000. By December 2004 nine more gem-quality pieces had been
found there, including a pale pink one that has been faceted to 9.41 carats.
At a Mohs hardness of 5 poudretteite is the softest stone on this list — too
scratchable for a ring but suitable for earrings, a pin or a pendant if care
is exercised. Previously this substance had been known as a rare mineral of
tiny colorless crystals, discovered in 1987 and named after the Poudrette
family that operated the source quarry at Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec.
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GRANDIDIERITE is a bluish green mineral found primarily in Madagascar. The
first and so far only clean faceted specimen, from Sri Lanka, was originally
mistaken for a serendibite and subsequently purchased in May 2000 by Prof.
Gübelin from Murray Burford. Shown to the right, it weighs 0.29 carats.
Grandidierite is trichroic, transmitting blue, green and white light. The
mineral is named after French explorer and natural historian Alfred
Grandidier, who among other things unearthed bones from the extinct half-ton
elephant bird in Ambolisatra, Madagascar.
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Orlando has long been a tourist’s dream, mainly because the Walt Disney Resort is located very close to the city. This is the reason most families plan for an Orlando vacation. Some even get their airline tickets and hotel reservations confirmed well in advance. Those who don’t, have to cut deals on last minute hotels — which makes it quite expensive. Sometimes they even have to opt for a hotel outside the city of Orlando and consequently tolerate quite a travel distance to get there. Fairmont Hotels becomes the perfect choice for such people.
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JEREMEJEVITE, pronounced ye-REM-ay-ev-ite, is a colorless, sky blue or pale
yellow stone, the highest quality of which comes from Namibia. In nature it occurs
in small obelisk-shaped crystals and has in the past been mistaken for aquamarine.
It was named after Russian mineralogist Pavel Jeremejev who discovered the mineral
in 1883. In early 2005 I saw an eye-clean 2.93-carat faceted
jeremejevite selling on the Internet for $2000.00 per carat.
The oval-cut sample at near left, provided by Jehan Fernando, weighs 59.58 carats (23.8 x 21.8 x 16.3 mm).
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MAJORITE forms under the extreme pressure that occurs 250 miles (400 km) or
more beneath the earth’s surface or from the shock of a meteorite impact.
It’s a purple form of garnet that was discovered in 1970 in the Coorara
meteorite near Eucla, Western Australia. The species is named after Alan
Major who researched high-pressure garnet formation. Small uncut majorite
specimens from the Chantonnay (France) meteorite were being marketed for
around $2400.00 per carat in 2004. There are probably substantial quantities
waiting for us on the moon and Mars where impact ejecta is far more accessible.
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TAAFFEITE, pronounced TAR-fite, is a mauve to purple to red stone named
after Bohemian-Irish gemologist Edward Taaffe who discovered the first one from a box of
Sri Lankan spinels in 1945.
The stone displayed a double refraction which was uncharacteristic of spinel. If you could
round up all the faceted taaffeites currently in existence they would fill about
half a cup. Of the rarest red variety there are fewer than ten specimens. Clean
colorless-to-mauve stones go for between $500.00 and $4000.00 per carat depending on the
color strength, cheap for something that is literally over a million times scarcer
than diamond.
The record holder appears to be the 9.31-carat specimen shown to the
left, though if that’s too much taaffeite for your budget there’s also
the one on the right at 6.17 carats.
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 There is another species
chemically and optically similar to taaffeite, MUSGRAVITE, which is even
rarer. Facetable musgravite was first reported in 1993; as of 2005 there were
eight such specimens, three of those identified by Murray Burford. The
mineral was discovered in 1967 at the Musgrave Range in South Australia, but
has since then turned up in Greenland, Madagascar and even Antarctica. It’s
not unlikely that some stones thought to be taaffeites by their owners are
actually musgravites. Micro-Raman spectroscopy, which uses a green laser, can
quite handily distinguish the two. The Madagascar musgravite shown here
[more info] is a spectacular 5.93 carats.
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 BENITOITE is
found only in San Benito County, California. The stone is a strong blue with
a dispersion similar to that of diamond, and fluoresces an intense blue-white
under UV light. The largest faceted benitoite weighs 15.42 carats, but stones
over one carat are rare. In 1974 someone stole a flawless 6.52-carat pear-shaped specimen
from the Zurich airport and it’s still missing. (I wouldn’t hold out much hope. They
probably fenced it by cutting it down into two or more smaller stones.) In 1985 benitoite was
designated the state gemstone of California. Like taaffeite, benitoite in
small sizes goes for between $500.00 and $2000.00 per carat.
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DIAMONDS, in general, are not at all
rare. The De Beers cartel would prefer you didn’t know this, but annual world
production of gem-quality diamond exceeds sixty million carats. This equals twelve
metric tons and would fill about 145 bushel baskets. Consider that the next
time you pony up a few thousand dollars for an engagement ring stone.
But strongly colored diamonds, called fancies, can be genuinely scarce. About
one carat out of every 10,000 sold is a fancy. These shades include yellow,
green, blue, orange, brown (“champagne”), purple, gray, black (called carbonado, recently shown to be meteoric), milky white,
pink and red. Red is by far the rarest. There are around thirty-five red
diamonds currently known and most weigh under half a carat. The largest is
the Moussaieff Red at 5.11 carats, cut from a 14-carat rough found by a
Brazilian farmer and displayed at the Smithsonian in 2003. Per carat prices
for natural, untreated red diamonds have so far ranged from about $800,000.00
to $1.9 million which makes this substance one of the world’s most concentrated
nonradiological forms of wealth. Most of the time these stones are unavailable
at any price, though there were reports in 2002 of a new discovery in the
Lipetsk region of Russia.
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World’s Rarest Things
World’s Rarest Metals
Today’s Date in a Kazillion Languages
Asteroids — Never a Dull Moment
Bookworm Atypical
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| Text © Peter Blinn |
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Credits:
Jeremejevite (rough) photo: courtesy Barbara Smigel of www.acstones.com;
jeremejevite (oval cut) photo: courtesy Jehan Fernando;
left taaffeite photo: courtesy Jeffery Bergman of www.primagem.com;
right taaffeite & musgravite photo: courtesy Trent Anderson of www.bkkgemstones.com;
painite photo: Wimon Manorotkul, courtesy Mark Kaufman;
serendibite and grandidierite photo & info: courtesy Murray Burford of www.sinhalite.com;
benitoite gemcutting & photo: courtesy Robert Spomer of Buena Vista Gem Works.
Mary of Burgundy (1457-1482) portrait is by an unidentified Northern Renaissance painter.
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