Happy Earth Day 2015! If you’re an eco-conscious shopper, concerned with the health of the planet and responsibly sourced diamonds, you’ve come to the right place. Today’s couples value beauty and ethics. To some, the 4 C’s matter just as much as where a diamond comes from. This evolution of conscious shopping gave rise to companies like […]
Tag: South Africa
At this month’s September Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair, Israeli diamond firm Leibish & Co. seized the opportunity to share their much buzzed-about new gem: the Purple Orchid Diamond. The 3.37 carat fancy intense pinkish purple VS2 diamond hails from an unnamed South African mine that is apparently one of the world’s best sources for purple […]
Auctioneers claim that a rare gem stone and the largest blue diamond in the world is going to fetch as much as $25 million at the auction in Geneva at Christie’s world renowned global auction house. On display currently at Christie’s New York City, this unusual diamond is pear shaped and a cobalt color. It […]
The Gemological Institute of America (or GIA) has now created technology that will help it detect synthetic diamonds. This is great news for you, the shopper, as it helps protect you from fake diamonds sold at authentic diamond prices. Curious as to what a ‘synthetic’ diamond is? These are basically laboratory created diamonds or diamonds […]
Some people mine for diamonds their entire lives in hopes of coming across that special gem. While some of them make more than a few diamond discoveries, rarely is there anyone who mines a 29.6-carat blue diamond worth tens of millions of dollars. Buts that’s exactly what happened in South Africa. London-listed Petra Diamonds discovered […]
Deep in Southern India tales of stones growing in the ground like carrots or turnips surfaced among the merchants. Using carob seeds as a counter weight merchants would weigh glimmering stones in the Indian sun and determine worth by the unit of measure carats as is still done today. So began the diamond trade across […]
What do Heidi Klum, Claudia Schiffer and now Candice Swanepoel have in common? Well, apart from being tall, blonde and beautiful models, of course. Anyone can do that. Well, provided you’re tall, blonde, and beautiful. But what unites this trio and 15 other models is that they’ve all wore one very, very exclusive item on the runway […]
On September 30, 2013, a rare 12.47 ct blue diamond was discovered in a mine in Lesotho, Africa. Blue diamonds are one of the rarest diamonds in the world. It was found in Gem Diamonds’ Letseng mine. The quality of the stone is not known at this point. At the same time, an 83.9 carat […]
Miners from the Lucara Diamond Company recently unearthed this massive diamond in Botswana. Weighing in at 257 uncut carats, it’s worth its weight in—well, diamond. The rich Orapa Kimberlite Field, on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, has produced other notable diamonds. Company officials say 14 diamonds over 100 carats were found this year in […]
If you have never heard of the Kimberley Diamond it is worth a short read for the back story. The Kimberley Diamond was discovered in what is known as “The Big Hole” in South Africa, the Kimberley Diamond Mine. The Kimberley Mine is considered to be one of the first diamond mines of 19th century […]
Imagine pit mining diamonds among the bare mountains of the southernmost tip of Africa. A hot sun blazes overhead in a blue, cloudless sky. The mine is surrounded by heavy machinery and hydraulic pumps. Miners sift through the ore and rubble of a volcanic blast that happened over 100 million years ago. Among the rubble […]
Fancy Colored Diamonds Investment 38 years of auction houses and private dealer records indicate the prices of fancy color diamonds doubling at the dealer level every 5 – 7 years. That’s an average of 12%-15% every year, with even higher rates for the rarer colors! Demand is increasing worldwide, while the earth’s supply of diamonds […]