Top 10 World's Rarest Gems
- Tanzanite: Found only in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro in Northern Tanzania, this blue-purple stone is a highly prized color-shifting gem.
- Taaffeite: It is named for Australian gemologist Richar Taaffe, who discovered a cut and polished specimen of the stone in 1945. Only a handful of these previous stones have ever been found, making them a true collector’s gem.
- Black Opal: The rarest type of Opal, the national gemstone of Australia. Black Opal is also the most valuable gem of its kind.
- Benitoite: Found near the San Benito River in California, Benitoite is a blue to purple gemstone first discovered in 1907. Under UV lights, it glows a brilliant chalky blue.
- Red Beryl: Also called Scarlet Emerald or bixbite, Red Beryl has only been found in Utah and New Mexico and has been described as 1000 times more valuable than gold.
- Alexandrite: It is named for Tsar Alexander II of Russia and exceedingly rare gemstone. It is a color-changing gemstone, its hue shifts from red to green depending on the light it’s exposed to.
- Jadeite: Jadeite may sound like the various semi-precious stones known informally as “jade”, but this incredibly rare gem is many times more valuable. Prized most when it is colored a deep, translucent green.
- Musgravite: Another precious stone in the same family as Taaffeite, this stone’s color ranges from a brilliant greenish gray to purple. Musgravite Range of Southern Australia, and for many years there were only eight known specimens.
- Painite: In the 1950’s, mineralogist Arthur C. D. Paine encountered an unusual brownish stone in Myanmar (Burma) that turned out to be one of the planet’s rarest gems. For decades, only two cut specimens were known to exist, causing the jewel to be more or less “priceless”.
- Pink Star Diamond: the Pint Star Diamond is a “Fancy Vivid Pink” diamond that was mined in 1999 in South Africa. Weighing in at 59.6 carats this gem was sold by Sotheby’s for a record $83 million: more than any other diamond – or any gem – ever sold.
