



ere are ten of the world’s rarest and most exclusive gemstone species, listed in no particular order except the most expensive one is at the bottom.
I’ve excluded stones that are impractically soft, 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.
Skip to: Painite ✧ Serendibite ✧ Poudretteite ✧ Grandidierite ✧ Jeremejevite ✧ Red Beryl (Formerly Bixbite) ✧ Taaffeite ✧ Musgravite ✧ Benitoite ✧ Red Diamond
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.
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.
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. 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.
Closely related to emerald and aquamarine, but vastly rarer than either, is RED BERYL. Mineralogist Maynard Bixby discovered this treasure in an area near Beaver, Utah in 1904. Since that time it has been commonly known as bixbite in his honor; but since the term can be so easily confused with bixbyite, a different mineral also named for Bixby, the World Jewelry Confederation now strongly discourages it.
Beryl is a compound of beryllium, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen. As with most gemstones its various colors derive from trace metals: in this case iron for aquamarine and golden beryl, chromium (and sometimes vanadium) for green beryl and emerald, cesium and lithium for pezzottaite, and manganese for morganite and red beryl2. Like emerald, facetable quality red beryl generally comes with mild to moderate inclusions which simply add to its visual novelty and make each stone unique.
Sources are limited to several small plots in Utah which have always proven excruciatingly difficult to exploit economically, so supply is strained at best. According to some published estimates, ruby of similar caliber is around 8000 times as plentiful. So even at $2,000 to $10,0003 per carat, many might consider red beryl quite underpriced.
Clean colorless-to-mauve stones go for between $500 and $4000 per carat depending on the color strength, cheap for something over a million times scarcer than diamond. The record holder appears to be the 9.31-carat specimen shown to the right.
It’s not unlikely 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.
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 and $2000 per carat.
How’s this for a Scrooge McDuck fantasy: Imagine you’re the first human on record to witness an erupting kimberlite pipe. Along with an earsplitting roar you’d see a kind of geyser shoot into the sky and shower the immediate area with sand, stones, and what would appear to be fragments of glass.4
But strongly colored diamonds, called fancies, can be genuinely scarce. About one carat out of every 10,000 sold is a fancy. Their hues span the entire spectrum, but among them a true, saturated red is by far the rarest. At this writing there are around three dozen 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.
So far the clearest (VS1) and most highly saturated in color is the 0.59-carat Rob Red, named after it owner and lifelong fancy diamond specialist Robert Bogel.
Per carat prices for natural, untreated red diamonds range from about $350,000 to $1.9 million which makes this substance one of the world’s most concentrated nonradiological forms of wealth.
1. Though many more have been found since that time.
2. The manganese ions tinting morganite and red beryl are different, however: manganese of oxydation state +2 for morganinte, +3 for red beryl.
3. Red beryls at the high end of this range will be large, exceedingly clear, and deeply colored. Virtually nonexistent, in other words. Proper certification would be essential since there’s similarly clear, chemically identical red beryl coming out of factories for around $7.00 per carat rough. (It can be distinguished from the natural article microscopically.)
4. Speaking of such things, here’s a volcano that spews GOLD (stale link alert).
Painite ☆ Wimon Manorotkul, courtesy Mark Kaufman
Serendibite photo & info ☆ Murray Burford of www.sinhalite.com
Poudretteite (faceted) ☆ DonGuennie [CC]
Poudretteite (rough) ☆ Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com [CC]
Grandidierite (faceted) ☆ American-Thai [CC]
Grandidierite (rough) ☆ Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com [CC]
Jeremejevite (emerald cut) ☆ Steve Perry Gems
Jeremejevite (oval cut) ☆ Jehan Fernando
Red beryl (rough) ☆ Parent Géry
Red beryl (faceted) ☆ DonGuennie [CC]
Left taaffeite photo ☆ 1001 Originals
Right taaffeite photo ☆ Jeffery Bergman of www.primagem.com
Musgravite photo ☆ DonGuennie [CC]
Benitoite photo ☆ Robert Spomer of Buena Vista Gem Works