A gemstone is a mineral, rock, or organic substance selected for its beauty and scarcity. The gemstone is then cut, faceted, and polished to create jewelry or other human adornments.
Because most gemstones are quite hard, not all of them can be used in jewelry making. Some are too delicate or fragile to be utilized, thus they are often shown in museums and sought after by collectors.
There are various gemstone types and you might be curious about the heaviest in the world amongst them.
Well, let’s check out the 10 heaviest gemstone types in this piece!
1. Golden Jubilee Diamond
The Golden Jubilee Diamond, the world’s heaviest cut and faceted diamond, measures 57.6 carats and is the largest precious gemstone ever unearthed.
It weighs 545.67 carats in total (109.13 g). It weighs 15.37 carats greater than the Cullinan I. (3.07 g).
The Premier Mine, where the Golden Jubilee Diamond was discovered, was also the location of the Cullinan diamond discovery in 1905, as well as the finding of other famous gems such as the Taylor–Burton (1966) and the Centenary diamond (1999). (1986).
2. Bahia Emerald
The Bahia Emerald, which weighs around 840 pounds (381 kilograms) and contains more than 180,000 carats, was found in Bahia, Brazil, and is made up of emerald crystals embedded in host rock.
It is the world’s largest unfaceted valuable gemstone. It was reported stolen from a vault in South El Monte, Los Angeles County, California, in September 2008.
The stone has a stated value of $400 million, but no one knows for certain. On eBay, emeralds have been listed for sale in the $75 million “Buy It Now” bracket.
3. The Pearl
The “pearl,” as its owners call it, is the world’s heaviest semi-precious stone, weighing six tons and measuring 1.6 meters in diameter.
It is estimated to be worth two billion yuan ($301.197 million), with pearls being more valuable in China than diamonds.
Fluorite, which glows green in the dark and is more precious than diamonds in China, is the country’s most prized gemstone. The finders crushed down the rough stone to a pearl shape over the period of three years.
4. El-Dorado Topaz
Miners in Minas Gerais, Brazil, discovered an astonishing 37 kg of unpolished “El-Dorado Topaz” in 1984, making it the largest faceted semi precious gemstone ever discovered. After it had been cut and polished to its ultimate form, the jewel weighed just six kilos.
As a consequence, the cutting procedure resulted in a loss of around 83 percent of the original raw stone’s weight. The finished stone weighed 31,000 carats (6.2 kg), making it one of the world’s heaviest faceted topaz and gemstones.
5. Ruby Crystal
This one-of-a-kind natural ruby crystal weighs 8.2 pounds or 18,696 carats and is unique. When cut into cabochons, rubies are semi-translucent to opaque and contain rutile, which may be utilized to create a six-ray star pattern.
When exposed to long-wave ultraviolet light, the crystal generates a vivid red fluorescence that is impossible to overlook. Its measurements are as follows: 122.4mm x 112.3mm x 133.9mm.
6. Cuprite
Cuprite is a copper oxide mineral found in the oxidized zone of copper sulfide deposits, along with native copper, chrysocolla, malachite, and azurite.
A single unique deposit in a Namibian copper mine is reported to have produced faceted sizes of gem-quality cuprite. With a diameter of 14 cm and a weight of 2.1 kg, they are one of the world’s heaviest gemstone types.
7. Spessartite Garnet
Spessartite, also known as mandarin garnet, ranges in color from brilliant orange to reddish-orange to orange-red.
The orange color is caused by manganese, however the addition of traces of iron results in a redder coloring. Almost all of our spessartite originates from a single deposit of pure, brilliant orange material unearthed in Nigeria.
Spessartite Garnet is one of the heaviest gemstone types with a weight of up to 10 carats (2000 milligram).
8. Painite
While working in Burma in 1954, British mineralogist A.C.D. Pain discovered the rare borate mineral called painite. The material contains trace amounts of vanadium and chromium, as well as zirconium, boron, calcium, and aluminum.
It has a hardness of 8 on the Mohs scale. Only 25 crystals were known, and only a handful of them had been faceted. Since then, other specimens have been unearthed in northern Burma. Painite, with a weight of 586.42 gm, is one of the heaviest gemstone types in the world.
9. Cinnabar
Mineral Cinnabar is often found in vein-filling mineral deposits associated with recently active volcanoes and alkaline hot springs.
The symmetry and birefringence of the crystal are similar to those of quartz. Cinnabar has a specific gravity of roughly 8.1 and a hardness range of 2.0 to 2.5.
The trigonal crystal system’s hexagonal crystalline lattice produces the color and properties, and these crystals may sometimes twin. It is one of the heaviest gemstone kinds, weighing 232.66 gm.
10. Cassiterite
The chemical formula for the tin oxide mineral cassiterite is SnO2. It is transparent in thin crystals but opaque in bulk. It’s a sought-after diamond because of its brightness and many crystal faces. Cassiterite was formerly the most important tin ore, and it remains so today.
Cassiterite is now found in alluvial or placer deposits with tough weathered grains. The greatest source of primary cassiterite is found in crystallized hydrothermal veins in Bolivian tin mines. Cassiterite, despite its modest size, is one of the heaviest gemstones, weighing 150.71 grams.
