After writing last Thursday's blog, I got curious about green diamonds. I don’t recall ever seeing one. This might be because they make up less than 0.1% of all fancy-colored diamonds on earth. After red, green diamonds are the 2nd rarest diamonds. Unlike most diamonds that get their colors from chemical impurities entering their atomic structure, green diamonds get their color from natural radiation. Over millions of years, alpha and beta rays emitted by radioactive minerals knock carbon atoms out of place in the crystal structure, changing how the stone absorbs light. In other words, radiation exposure creates carbon atom vacancies. This vacancy defect, also known as the GR1 center in a diamond, causes the green color.
According to Only National Diamonds, radiation from alpha particles usually only penetrates a few micrometers deep, leaving a shallow green "skin" on rough stones. Diamond cutters must plan and facet the gem with expert precision to evenly distribute this color throughout the stone. It may explain why we see more radiant cuts in this fancy colored gemstone. The radiant cut’s faceting maximizes light reflection, which intensifies and saturates the color of the stone, making it appear more vivid.
A very few green diamonds are also colored by more complex defects involving nitrogen, hydrogen, or nickel.
The world’s natural green diamonds come from South America and Africa. Nowadays, laboratory irradiation can also produce green diamonds. It’s challenging to tell natural-grown and lab-grown green diamonds apart. Both are real diamonds. It’s unlawful to sell lab-grown diamonds without transparency.
The scarcity of green diamonds makes them very pricey. Just like other colored gemstones, color is the most important of the fancy diamond Cs (followed by cut, carat, and clarity) in determining value. As their color becomes more saturated and vibrant, prices rise dramatically. Based on their GIA color intensity grade for a 1-carat stone, a Fancy Green color costs from $50,000 - $100,000; a Fancy Intense Green costs between $150,000 - $200,000, and a Fancy Vivid Green costs $300,000+.
The Dresden Green, a 41-carat diamond originating from India’s Golconda mines, is the largest and most famous natural green diamond in the world. It is a chemically pure IIa diamond with VS1 clarity. Frederick Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, paid 400,000 thalers for the diamond in 1741. Perhaps someone should have told Diespach, the court jeweler of Saxony, that fads come and go before, in 1768, he mounted the Dresden Green as an elaborate hat ornament surrounded by 411 white diamonds.😁 Today, it is on display in the Green Vault at Dresden Castle in Germany. The renowned green diamond survived the Seven Years’ War, the Napoleonic Wars, World Wars I and II, its confiscation by the Soviets, who returned it to Dresden in 1958, and the 2019 Dresden Museum heist of royal jewels. Thankfully, at the time of the theft, the Dresden Green was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan.
The Aurora Green (👆top image) is a 5.02 carat Fancy Vivid Green rectangular radiant cut diamond with VS2 clarity. The Aurora Green is surrounded by pink diamonds set in a ring. Found in Brazil, it sold for a wooping $16.8 million, the most expensive price ever paid for a green diamond, at Christie’s Hong Kong in 2016. Chow Tai Fook Jewellery bought it. Without fluorescence, its GIA-rated Fancy Green color is one of a kind!
Personally, I’d rather pay less money to get a bigger, more common white (clear) diamond. Other jewelry lovers may covet uniqueness over size.
Ultra-rare fancy-colored diamonds are so wildly expensive that customers fork over a ton of moola for a tiny stone, so I wouldn’t buy, but visit them at Tiffany’s New York flagship store or the museums around the world that house them. First a dreamer, then a realist ... and perhaps an adventurous traveler is the way to get more bang for your buck!💚
This is an exciting post Debbie. I knew nothing of green diamonds, and they look just fabulous. I do like green stones! We went to the Green Vault in Dresden in 2018 on our Elbe River cruise. It was the first such museum of that type I have seen and I was blown away by the luxurious jewels, rooms of them, from the Saxony monarchy. I don't know that I ever heard of the heist the following year, 2019, and wonder how much loot was taken. We must not have been allowed to take pictures as I just checked my photo files of Dresden and can't see any taken at the Vault. So I don't remember if I saw the elaborate hat ornament, or not! Everything there was equally astonishing. We saw a similar collection in Munich last year, just amazing what the former Kings in Germany had in their treasuries.
ReplyDeleteOh, how lovely that you visited the Green Vault in Dresden as well as Dresden, the town, Trish! I, too, learned a lot about green diamonds by writing the post. Mother Nature is amazing. Thankfully, some of these historic jewels end up in museums, so the public has a chance to see them.
DeleteA shout-out to jeweler Harry Winston and wealthy heiress Marjorie Merriweather, who, in their lifetimes, donated famous pieces they bought to the Smithsonian. Today it seems like more pieces get resold, disappearing into private collectors.
I so enjoyed reading your comment. Thank you for coming here and taking the time to share your personal experience.