Diamonds make up some of the most valuable jewels on the planet, but are saffron diamonds the rarest?
Saffron diamonds are extremely rare, owing to two facts. Firstly, they’re only really found in two places: a standalone mine in Australia, and a series of mines throughout South Africa. Secondly, only a few gem-quality saffron diamonds will be found over the course of a whole year.
Read on to learn more about saffron diamonds and their place in the world of gemstones.
Yellow and Precious
The world isn’t entirely sure why saffron diamonds are called saffron diamonds. It could be for one of two reasons – either the coloring of the gemstone or the rarity of it.
Primarily, the term ‘saffron’ is used to describe an extremely expensive spice, millennia-old, and intensely valuable. It can be worth up to five-hundred dollars per ounce and has an extensive and storied legacy.
Saffron is taken from a plant called Crocus Sativa, in the middle of which grows three tiny strands. These strands are saffron itself, and they must be removed by hand and carefully prepared.
It can take anything up to eighty-thousand individual plants to produce just one pound of saffron. The taste and fragrance of saffron are said to be extremely unique and wonderful, a fact which exists to further its value.
This rarity and extremely high value can be translated over to saffron diamonds. Although they’re little-known, even in the jewelry world, they’re some of the most expensive and sought-after diamonds.
These diamonds can come in a range of hues, anywhere from light yellow to an almost orangey color. They’re found almost exclusively in two locations: a mine in Australia, and a few mines throughout South Africa.
Coincidentally, it’s an impurity or flaw in the stone that contributes toward the beautiful hue. These saffron diamonds are colored by the introduction of nitrogen to the stone as it grows.
However, that flaw is what creates the huge value of a saffron diamond. There are several factors that weigh into the valuation of a diamond though, such as clarity, cut, and richness of color.
Low-quality saffron diamonds can be worth just a few hundred dollars, but the higher-quality examples can fetch prices of well over sixty-thousand dollars at retail.
This is the same for most gemstones, with a few rare examples fetching bizarrely-high values.
However, they’re dramatically rare, with just a few gem-quality stones being found every year. They’re almost always snapped up immediately for use in high-end, top-tier jewelry.
Making The Most Expensive
Some of the most expensive diamonds are colored; blue, pink, yellow, even red. Throughout history, these colored diamonds have shaken up the jewelry industry and commanded incredible price tags at auction.
For example, there’s the Pink Star, a near 60-carat diamond that sold in 2017 for a mind-blowing seventy-one million dollars. It was considered one of the finest pink diamonds in the history of the industry.
Then there’s the diamond with likely the longest legacy in history – the Hope Diamond. This 45-carat diamond was uncovered in India more than four hundred years ago and has traveled the world since.
There are reports of The Hope Diamond being a cursed gemstone, bringing unfortunate luck to all who own it. It’s been passed from pillar to post over the last few centuries, but currently resides in The Smithsonian.
It also boasts a value of around three-hundred and fifty million dollars.
Apparently, the most expensive diamonds come in red shades. These diamonds are the rarest of all colored diamonds, otherwise known as ‘fancy’ colored diamonds.
Red diamonds are as small as they are rare, with the largest in history being just five-carats in weight. However, a red diamond of a single carat can sell for anything up to two million dollars.
Around ninety-percent of all red diamonds originate from the Argyle Mine in Australia, which is coincidentally where most saffron diamonds come from. Reportedly, this mine produces around fourteen million carats of diamonds annually.
Unfortunately, this incredibly high production has caused an early depletion of the mine, and it’s running on borrowed time. The expensive resources within have been nearly exhausted in the last three decades of mining.
However, the yellow (saffron) diamonds definitely hold their own value at auction. In 2014, a single yellow diamond weighing one-hundred carats sold at auction for over sixteen million dollars.