Thursday, November 19, 2015

Historical diamond find


For some reason, I've always been fascinated by large diamonds (and actually, other large gemstones as well).  I don't collect them, I can't afford them, and I don't go looking for them, but I really enjoy their uniqueness and their history.  Because most of the big gemstones have some history.

But this one doesn't, because they just found it:

Largest diamond in over a century found in Botswana

It's a nice one, clear and white, and 1,111 carats.  The Cullinan diamond, which begat the world's current two largest blue-white cut diamonds in the British crown and scepter, was 3,106 carats.  This one is now the second-largest ever found.

One thing that isn't entirely well-known is that the Cullinan I (in the scepter) isn't the world's largest cut diamond.  That record is owned by the Golden Jubilee, about 15 carats bigger, but the Golden Jubilee isn't blue-white, it's yellow-brown ("gold" is a stretch).

Here's a page with a list of the world's ten largest cut diamonds, even though one of them, the De Beers, is currently whereabouts unknown.

Crazytopics:  10 largest diamonds in the world

So the question is:  could they possible cut this new one to be even bigger than the Cullinan I or the Golden Jubilee?  A lot depends on the internal structure of the big rock.  I'm sure that setting the record has to be on the minds of the owners.

There are only a few pictures of it - below is the best one that shows it's transparency.  The other pictures show it being held, though because we can't judge the size of the hand holding it, we don't have a good size scale.


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