Take for example the spherical lightning. Spherical lightning is a very rare phenomenon. They are described as spherical, exploding balls of electricity, like something out of science fiction. It is such a rare phenomenon that there is difficulty in studying and fully understanding it by scientists. The same can be said of red diamonds.
Natural diamonds, as a whole, are among the most important materials on earth. So when we separate out the category of natural colored diamonds, we find that they are even rarer.
In fact, according to the GIA, only 0.4% of all the natural diamonds they have graded in the last twenty years have been fancy colors. Among all these fancy color diamonds, red is the rarest color. It is so rare that we know that there are fewer than thirty truly red natural diamonds.
Diamond is a crystalline form of pure carbon that formed under extreme conditions in the Earth's interior three billion years ago. Elements other than carbon or natural radiation introduced during formation can change a natural diamond from a colourless crystal to one that shows almost any colour of the rainbow.
For example, natural radiation within the earth can cause green diamonds; boron can cause blue diamonds. On the other hand, red diamonds are not thought to be caused by foreign elements like other diamond colours.
Instead, scientists believe that red diamonds are caused by an extreme version of crystal lattice deformation.
That is the same thing that makes pink diamonds pink. This distortion is created naturally, deep in the earth by extreme heat and pressure in every direction after the stone is formed.
The additional heat and pressure can change the position of the carbon atoms inside the diamond. This causes them to reflect pink or in extreme cases red light. Most people believe that this is what causes the color of these diamonds. But the phenomenon is so rare that scientists cannot study it comprehensively enough.
As these diamonds are so rare, they are never found in large sizes. Although finding colorless diamonds is also rare, we occasionally find sizes of 100 carats or more.
When it comes to red diamonds, however, the largest one in existence is only 5.11 carats, and they called it The Moussaieff Red.
Discovered in the 1990s in the Minas Gerais region of Brazil, a source of natural coloured diamonds for hundreds of years. The Moussaieff Red had 13.90 carats in its rough form.
After negotiations with the man who discovered the diamond, it was finally purchased by the legendary diamond cutter William Goldberg. After much study, analysis and planning, Goldberg finally cut the rough diamond into the 5.11-carat triangular brilliant cut we know today. This officially made it the largest fancy red diamond in history.
In 2001, Goldberg sold the diamond to the famous London jeweller Shlomo Moussaieff.
That's how it got its name. The reported sale at the time was $8 million, a bargain compared to the priceless nature of the stone today. Moussaieff Red remains in the hands of Moussaieff Jewelers. It has since been featured in many museum exhibitions. Such as in the famous “Splendour of Diamonds” exhibition at the Smithsonian in 2003. This exhibition is one of the most important diamond exhibitions of all time.
Like most other fancy colored diamonds, these diamonds can be found in one pure color, fancy red, or with secondary shades. These include purple, brown and orange. For example, in a “fancy orange red” diamond, red is the dominant color, but orange is the secondary color.
Unlike most other diamond colour possibilities, red cannot be a secondary colour.
Most natural coloured diamonds are also found in various levels of intensity, such as intense, vivid or light. An example could be “fancy vivid pink” or “fancy pale yellow”. These diamonds, however, are only in one intensity level, fancy red. For these reasons, only “fancy red” is the rarest and, therefore, the most valuable.
Since there are so few of them, red diamonds - even those with a differentiated colour - do not appear on the market very often. However, when they do, their prices easily exceed $1 million per carat, far more than almost any other type of diamond.
In 2022, Heritage Auction sold a fancy 1.21-carat red orange diamond for over $1.2 million per carat, a huge amount for a diamond of this size with a different color.
Because of their high value and their history of steadily increasing in value, red diamonds are most often bought by investors.
Most of us may never be lucky enough to own one of these stones. But one of the largest and most beautiful red diamonds ever discovered is available for almost anyone's gaze.
The 5.03-carat round-cut brilliant-cut De Young Red is the third largest diamond of its kind in existence. It is one of the exhibits in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. in their famous gemstone exhibit along with the rest of their incredible diamond collection.
