Rare 29.6 carat, Fancy Blue Diamond Discovered!
Petra Diamond Mining Company, CEO Johan Dippenaar, pictured above, has a reason to smile because the acorn size, fancy blue piece of diamond rough that he’s holding weighs a whopping 29.6 carats and might easily be worth tens of millions! The diamond was discovered in South Africa, in the same diamond mine where the famous Cullinan Diamond was found in 1905, it is the largest gem quality diamond ever discovered and weighed 3,106 carats!
The famous Cullinan Blue Diamond which weighed 25.5 carats was unearthed in 2013 and sold for $16.9 million dollars, and the Star of Josephine Diamond discovered in 2008 sold for 9.49 million.
What does diamond rough look like?
This picture of the 29.6 carat, rare blue diamond found by Petra Diamonds in the Cullinan Diamond Mine shows what diamond rough looks like before it has been cut and polished. As a fifth generation diamond cutter, Brian Gavin has a lot of experience with regards to the amount of time that it takes to carefully examine a piece of diamond rough to determine the best options for cutting the diamond in a shape that will yield the maximum carat weight and quality.
One thing which sets fancy colored diamonds apart from the white diamonds featured in the Brian Gavin Signature and Brian Gavin Blue collections is that fancy colored diamonds are cut to maximize the intensity of color, while our ideal cut diamonds are cut to maximize the volume of light return and sparkle.
The diamonds featured within the Brian Gavin Blue collection are not actually blue in color, like the fancy blue colored piece of diamond rough pictured above, they merely exhibit the property of blue fluorescence when exposed to black light, we provide a photograph of each diamond from the collection as seen under black light, glowing beautiful medium to very strong blue.
Brian Gavin offers an extensive collection of fancy colored diamonds in practically all the colors of the rainbow, including blue. This 0.72 carat, Radiant cut, fancy intense greenish-blue diamond of VS-1 clarity is currently available from Brian Gavin and while it is not as large or as intense blue as the piece of diamond rough pictured above, it also costs only a fraction of the price! Care to guess how much? The value of a fancy intense blue colored diamond might surprise you… When fancy colored diamonds are of natural origin, and have not been created through processes involving irradiation and other techniques which are used to modify the color of diamonds, they can be quite costly because they are extremely rare. However they are affordable enough that practically anybody can add a fancy colored diamond to their collection, if they are willing to consider a variety of diamond colors and smaller carat weights. For instance, this 0.13 carat, fancy intense blue, cushion cut diamond from Brian Gavin is within the reach of many of our regular customers and would look great in the center of a pendant where the icy blue color of the diamond is enhanced by a crest of F/G color, VS clarity, Brian Gavin Signature melee, which our custom jewelry design department could whip up in no time!
