Crystals are beautiful and unique ways to add an extra beautiful detail to your life through jewelry, home decor, or even just using them spiritually.
While diamonds are a girl’s best friend, there are gemstones out there that are even more rare and expensive than diamonds. This is mostly because of the infrequency of their existence in the world. Let’s mine further and look into which gemstones are the most rare.
10. Taaffeite
When you angle this rock in different ways, it picks up the light differently and has true color changing properties. It was discovered by Richard Taaffe in 1945, giving the stone its namesake.
The stone must be high quality to facet it, and the amount of high quality taaffeite exists today is miniscule.
9. Ammolite
Marine mollusks tens of millions of years old create ammolite, making it a hot commodity. The location of ammolite is limited, being mostly in the Bearpaw Formation in Canada.
The colors of this stone are another factor that makes them so unique. Some of the fragments have every color in the rainbow, with the more colorful ones being even more desired by collectors and shoppers alike.
8. Benitoite
This stone is actually the state gemstone of California. There needs to be lots of barium present and low levels of silica to really form, which is why this gem can mostly only be found in one mine in California, the Benito gem mine.
Most of the pieces found of this precious rock are very small, usually less than 5 cm long.
7. Larimar
You can only find larimar in one place: the Dominican Republic. Because there is only one deposit where this gem is found, miners must excavate deeper and deeper every time they wish to find more. This only makes the gem more rare and valuable as time goes on.
The blue and white pattern seen on this gem resembles the ocean. Some confuse it with turquoise, but it is more cool and blue toned than the turquoise stone is.
6. Black Opal
Most of the black opal stones found are from Australia. The stone ranges in hues in terms of how cloudy the stones look to the eye, with some being extremely dark and some being almost clear.
The prestige of black opal is the reason for its expensive price. Red hue black opal is the most rare, so collectors look for that hue the most.
5. Musgravite
Musgravite can be located mostly in Australia, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar.There are very few musgravite gems out there in the world, so the scarcity of it is what makes it so rare.
The gemstone comes in a few different colors, but the purple hue is what is the most scarce and therefore the most expensive to find.
4. Jadeite
The conditions that need to be met for jadeite to form are high pressure and low temperature. The stone is very durable and can withstand some harsher conditions. In terms of color, jadeite can be seen in a range of colors that are mostly from green to white.
Jadeite is mostly found in Myanmar. Metamorphic rocks are also harder to mine in general, which makes jadeite more difficult to come by.
3. Red Beryl
Red beryl gemstones are bright red in color. One of the only places this gem can be discovered is in Utah, USA. Two elements, beryllium and manganese, must be available to form this strikingly red stone.
This occurrence only happens infrequently, so the formation of red beryl is scarce. People seek this lovely gem due to its bright red color, so bright that some people call it “red emerald.”
2. Alexandrite
Alexandrite is a very interesting stone because it can change color depending on the lighting it’s in from green to red. The most sought after fragments of Alexandrite are those that change color the most.
There are lab-grown alexandrite stones that people create that limit the color changing properties of this breathtaking stone. However, natural alexandrite is extremely rare and hard to come by.
1. Painite
When Painite was first discovered by Arthur C.D. Pain in the 1950s, he thought it was Ruby. However, it was discovered as a new mineral and was then named after him. The reason this gemstone is so rare is because it is created by the interaction between the elements boron and zirconium. These elements do not interact very frequently in nature.
There are only a few intact pieces of painite that have been discovered to date. Most of the fragments discovered are extremely small and are of poor quality.
Gems Galore!
The next time you may be in the market for a shiny new diamond, check out some of these rare stones for a colorful alternative to a valuable piece of jewelry.
Additionally, most of these stones have lookalikes that are less rare than the rare gemstones themselves. So check out some inexpensive versions of these as well to stay on budget!
