Rare Gemstones II

Red Beryl Emerald is found in the Thomas Range and the Wah Wah Mountains of Utah. It occurs on rhyolite where it crystallizes under low pressure and high temperature along fractures or cavities of volcanic rhyolitic magma. Very few cut specimens exist.

Musgravite is a silicate mineral whose 3 main ingredients are beryllium (Be), magnesium (Mg) and aluminum (Al). It was first found in the Musgrave area in Australia in 1993. Musgravite has been found in Greenland and Madagascar, but neither produces gem quality material. Two pieces of faceted gem-quality musgravite came from Sri Lanka in the mid 90s.

Grandidierite is a bluish green mineral found primarily in Madagascar. The first faceted specimen came from Sri Lanka. The crystal is trichroic, transmitting blue, green and white light.

Painite was first discovered in the early 1950s in Myanmar.(Burma) Before 2005 less than 25 crystals were known, more have been unearthed since.

Garnets are found in many colors including colorless. The rarest of them all is the blue garnet, first seen in the late 1990s in Bekily, Madagascar. It changes color from blue-green in the daylight to purple in incandescent light due to it's high vanadium content. A 4.2 carat blue garnet gem sold at auction in 2003 for $6.8 Million.

Serendibite is a cyan colored stone that comes from Sri Lanka and Burma exclusively. It is composed of a complex formula of calcium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, boron and oxygen. There were only three faceted (cut) specimens in existance ... of 0.35 carats, 0.55 carats and 0.56 carats.

Very few red diamonds have ever been found. One in every hundred million diamonds is a natural red colour. The Moussaieff Red is the largest Fancy Red diamond in the world at 5.11 carats. Discovered by a Brazilian farmer in the 1990s, the rough stone weighed 13.9 carats. The triangular brilliant cut stone was sold in 2001 for around $8 million. It is valued today at over $10 million.

The Rob Red Diamond is 0.59 carats and it still holds a special place in the diamond world. Rob Red is rated as the most intense red diamond ever discovered.

Jadeite is found in the Motagua Valley, Guatemala, and was used by the Olmec and Maya. Typically, the most highly valued colors of jadeite are the most intensely green, translucent varieties. The record price for a single piece of jadeite jewelry was set at the November 1997 Christie’s Hong Kong auction. The “Doubly Fortunate” necklace of 27 .5 mm jadeite beads sold for US$9.3 million.

Gold coins from 1715 treasure fleet found

48 gold coins from the 1715 treasure fleet have been discovered off the Florida coast. Brent Brisben, who owns the shipwreck salvage company 1715 Fleet – Queens Jewels LLC, discovered the coins with a four-member crew as part of his excavation quest Saturday. A half hour into their quest, the crew was only 100 feet away from the shore when they discovered the coins. Brisben is estimating the value of the coins at $250,000, but says his archaeologist has to come in and provide the full value. He estimated that each coin is worth $4,000 to $5,000. The oldest one dates back to 1697, and the newest one 1714, he said.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/07/treasure-hunters-find-gold-coin-trove-off-florida/____________________________________________________

On July 31, 1715 eleven of the twelve Spanish ships sailing from Havana to Spain with royal treasure were wrecked by a violent hurricane on the east coast of Florida from St. Lucie to Cape Canaveral. Seven of these Spanish Treasure laden ships were scattered over the reefs from south of Fort Pierce to the Sebastian Inlet. Spanish coins of all types (gold and silver) started to be found on the beaches in the 1950s after strong nor'easters or a violent hurricane. This part of Florida's Atlantic east coast quickly became known as the Treasure Coast.

The (El Senor) San Miguel - was a 22 gun NAO Class(Fast Carrack). It very likely contained a significant portion of the treasure. It is believed the ship separated from the fleet the day before the storm struck and the wreck has never been found. It is believed only a small fraction of the treasure of the lost 1715 Treasure Fleet has been recovered.

1715 Fleet ships believed to have been found are: 1 - Nuestra Senora de la Regla 2 - Santo Cristo de San Roman 3 - Nuestra Senora del Carmen 4 - Nuestra Señora de La Popa 5 - Nuestra Senora del Rosario 6 - Urca de Lima 7 - Nuestra Senora de las Nieves

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Ships of the 1715 Fleet never located are the: 8 - Maria Galante 9 - El Senor San Miguel 10 - El Cievro 11 - Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion 12 - Griffon made it safely and went on to France

VERO BEACH — Bonnie Schubert couldn’t believe her eyes when, about 1,000 feet off Frederick Douglass Beach near Fort Pierce, she came face to face with a solid gold statue of a bird that had lain under the Atlantic Ocean exactly 295 years and 15 days.

“I remember asking myself, ‘Is this real?’” Schubert recalled Wednesday as the 5.5-inch-tall statue she found Aug. 15 was revealed to the public at her home in the Vero Shores neighborhood of Vero Beach.“The Bird,” as it’s come to be known, is real all right. So is it’s $885,000 appraised value. The statue was aboard one of 11 Spanish ships laden with treasures from the New World that were bound from Havana to the court of King Phillip V before encountering a hurricane July 31, 1715, and sinking off the Treasure Coast.

Famous Diamonds III

The Blue Heart weighs 30.82 carats finished and was first recorded around 1900. The stone changed hands several times until it was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. where it remains to this day.

The Ashberg diamond is one of the first diamonds discovered in South Africa in the mid 1860s and used to be part of the Russian Crown Jewels, a collection that started in 1719. After the 1920s, the Crown Jewels were transferred to the Kremlin Diamond Fund. In 1934 a Russian trade delegation sold the diamond to Mr. Ashberg. The stone is 102.48 carats and is amber or brownish yellow with a glance of orange. (type Ib)

The DeYoung Red Diamond is one of the largest known natural fancy dark red diamonds. It is a modified round brilliant cut diamond that has a clarity grade of VS-2 and weighs 5.03 carats. The diamond was acquired by S. Sydney DeYoung, a Boston jeweler, as part of a collection of estate jewelry in which it was wrongly identified as a garnet. It was gifted to the National Gem Collection by Mr. DeYoung in 1987.

The Sancy weighs 55 carats and is a pear shape. It was first owned by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who lost it in battle in 1477. The stone is named after a later owner, Seigneur de Sancy, a French Ambassador to Turkey in the late 16th century. He loaned it to the French king, Henry III, who wore it in the cap with which he concealed his baldness. Henry IV of France also borrowed the stone from Sancy, but it was sold in 1664 to James I of England. In 1688, James II, last of the Stuart kings of England, fled with it to Paris. It disappeared during the French Revolution. It reappeared in 1828. In 1867 it was displayed at the Paris Exposition. The Sancy surfaced in 1906 when bought by William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor. The family possessed it for 72 years until the 4th Viscount Astor sold it to the Louvre for $1 million in 1978. The Sancy now rests in the Apollo Gallery.

The Koh-i-Noor, ("Mountain of Lights"), is a 105.6 carat diamond, believed to have originated in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India around 1300. It has been said that whoever owned the Koh-I-Noor ruled the world. In 1850, the diamond was confiscated from Duleep Singh by the British East India Company and became part of the British Crown Jewels when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877. The diamond is currently set into the Crown of Queen Elizabeth and is on display at the Tower of London.

The Steinmetz Sirius is a 103.83 carat D IF cushion shaped diamond mined from the Premier mine in South Africa. This legendary cushion shaped stone is claimed to be one of the largest D colored, internally flawless diamonds to ever appear at auction and is only the fourth of its kind (over 100 carat) to be sold at auction.

The Steinmetz Pink is 59.60 carats and rated in color as Fancy Vivid Pink by the Gemological Institute of America. The Steinmetz Pink is the largest known diamond having been rated Vivid Pink. The Steinmetz Group took a cautious 20 months to cut the Pink. Its origin and history is unknown.

The Kimberley Diamond gets its name from the mine in South Africa where it was found sometime before 1868. It was cut from a 490-carat stone. It was turned into a 70-carat gem in 1921 and recut to its present form in 1958 to improve its brilliance and proportions.

2.95 carat diamond found in Arkansas

Terry Staggs of Kentucky was visiting the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas on July 4th when he saw something in the dirt sparkle in the sunlight. It turned out to be a 2.95-carat, champagne-colored diamond, according to United Press International. Mr. Staggs has named it the Patriot Diamond in honor of the day it was found.

The Crater of Diamonds is a 911-acre state park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas that contains a 37.5 acre plowed field in which visitors can literally dig for diamonds.

It's the world's only diamond-bearing site that's accessible to the public. The largest diamond ever discovered in the US, the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam, was found there in 1924. It was cut twice, resulting in a final 12.42-carat (2.484 g) M-color, VVS1 clarity emerald-cut diamond. In 1971, the Uncle Sam was sold for $150,000.

http://www.businessinsider.com/man-finds-295-carat-diamond-in-arkansas-2013-7