In honor of September's official birthstone, we're revisiting a magnificent 392-carat blue sapphire that smashed an auction record when it sold for $17.3 million at Christie's Geneva in 2014. It remains the highest price paid at auction for a sapphire. Named the "Blue Belle of Asia," the cushion-cut, cornflower blue Ceylon sapphire fetched nearly twice […]
As the world’s leading diamond producer, Russia's Alrosa Group gets to see a lot of rough stones — from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Among the 40 million carats that are sorted in an average year, a handful of exceptional diamond oddities are extracted and preserved in the company's collection of rare finds. They are […]
Featuring 36 cushion-cut Sri Lankan sapphires totaling 195 carats, the spectacular "Hall Sapphire Necklace" is the next stop on our virtual tour of the Smithsonian’s National Gem Collection, which resides in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals in Washington, DC. The platinum necklace — a gift to the Smithsonian in 1979 […]
Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you throwback songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, we flip the 45 of The Kingston Trio's 1958 chart-topping hit, "Tom Dooley," to find a surprising gem of a song on the B-side, "Ruby Red." Writers Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance employ […]
Israeli teenagers unearthed a hoard of 425 ancient gold coins while volunteering at an archeological site during their summer vacations. The two youths were helping the Israel Antiquities Authority with an excavation in the central part of the country when they noticed something shimmering in the ground. “It was amazing,” said Oz Cohen. “I dug […]
Actress Gal Gadot gets to wear the 128.54-carat "Tiffany Diamond" in the soon-to-be-released big screen adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. The famous — but rarely worn — gem dangles from a platinum necklace featuring an openwork motif of sun rays glistening with 481 diamonds totaling more than 100 carats. A Tiffany representative […]
Within the span of just a few hours, a family of gold prospectors pulled two huge gold nuggets from the ground near Tarnagulla in the Australian state of Victoria. The dramatic scene played out during Thursday's episode of Aussie Gold Hunters on the Discovery Channel. The nuggets weigh a combined 3.5 kilograms (7.7 pounds) and […]
The Letšeng mine in the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho has produced another colossal gem-quality diamond. The 442-carat, Type IIa stone could be worth as much as $18 million. The still-unnamed rough gem is the fifth-largest gem-quality diamond ever unearthed at Letšeng, a mine that is recognized as the highest dollar-per-carat kimberlite mine in […]
Hustling to meet a billionaire's December 31 deadline, Israeli luxury brand Yvel has assembled a team of 25 jewelers and diamond setters to fabricate a COVID-19 protective mask decorated with 3,608 black and white diamonds. The team will be working in shifts to complete the bespoke mask, which is valued at $1.5 million and is […]
Officials at Aussie mining company IBDH (India Bore Diamond Holdings) were surprised to learn that many of its signature "Ellendale" fancy yellow diamonds are displaying an extremely rare purple fluorescence when placed under ultraviolet light. This is extremely unusual because violet or purple fluorescence is normally associated with blue diamonds. The anomaly came to light […]