Australia's Argyle Mine is one of the world's only sources of violet diamonds. In fact, most of the world's diamonds that display a pure violet hue come from Argyle. However, in the entire history of the mine, less than 100 carats of rough violet diamonds have been found, making them exceptionally rare.
Even purple diamonds with secondary hues that display a strong purple color will cost a pretty penny. Depending on its size, color, and intensity, a Purple diamond can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars to over a million dollars in the rare cases of an unusually large stone.
Purple diamonds are so rare that the most common question asked about purple diamonds on Google is whether or not they exist. Yes, purple diamonds do exist! But treated and lab-grown purple diamonds are very much more common than natural purple diamonds.
The Royal Purple Heart is another purple diamond that became quite popular. It weighed 7.34 carat, perfect heart cut, and fancy vivid purple diamond. It is deemed as the largest purple gem to be discovered. Its origin remains undisclosed.
Purple diamonds are associated with spirituality, enlightenment, and pride. They are a good choice for philosophers, artists, sociologists, and psychologists. The color purple has also long been associated with nobility, wealth, and power.
The way that diamonds reflect light is unique: the inside of a real diamond should sparkle gray and white while the outside should reflect a rainbow of colors onto other surfaces. A fake diamond, on the other hand, will have rainbow colors that you can see inside the diamond as well.
Red diamonds are the rarest of the colored diamonds, with only 20-30 existing in the entire world. They get their beautiful red color from a rare process during their formation, which changes the crystal structure of the diamond and causes light to pass through it differently than colorless diamonds.
Despite the popularity of white diamonds, red diamonds take the prize for the most expensive diamond color. This is primarily due to their rarity. Red diamonds also differ in the source of their color from other colored diamonds.
In today's market, prices of light colored pink purple diamonds (pink is a popular and common secondary shade) are about $10,000-$25,000 per carat for diamonds smaller than half a carat (even as small as 0.10 carat) with medium grade clarity such as SI.
Though an amethyst is no diamond, it is still a beautiful gem and looks great combined with colored or white diamonds. The amethyst is a type of quartz with a violet hue.
Did you know that natural (also called “fancy”) diamonds can come in nearly every color of the rainbow? While the odds of a diamond having color are estimated at 1 in 10,000, rare brown, yellow, red, blue and purple diamonds exist, as well as diamonds of all sorts of colors in between.
The Hope Diamond
Arguably the most famous and most cursed precious gemstone in history, this 45.52-carat sparkler has a long and storied past. The Hope Diamond has been blamed for a laundry list of tragedies, including but not limited to: beatings, stabbings, murder, insanity, and suicide.
Amethyst is the most popular purple gemstone. At one point in time, it was as precious as diamonds, sapphires, and rubies!
Naturally purple diamonds account for approximately 1% of all diamonds mined from Serbia, Canada, and Australia, such scarcity means they are second only to red diamonds in terms of rarity, although as noted previously, there are some gemologists who argue that these diamonds are as rare as red diamonds, if not rarer.
In general, colored diamonds are very sparse, red diamonds being the rarest of them all. In terms of formations, Type IIa is the rarest form of diamond followed by the Type Ib.
Champagne, gray, salt and pepper, chameleon, and black diamonds are actually less expensive than their white counterparts! All the other colors, however, are more expensive.
Seen in practically every color of the rainbow, colored diamonds are far rarer than diamonds in the D-to-Z color range. Only one out of 10,000 carats of fashioned diamonds displays fancy color, and a diamond's chances of displaying intense color are even less – one in 25,000.
To get a naturally colored purple diamond, rough diamond ore must be exposed to high concentrations of hydrogen as it forms. The longer the hydrogen is present near the raw diamond, and the higher the hydrogen concentration levels, the deeper its purple tint will become.
The highest color grade for a diamond is “D”. “D” color diamonds are very rare and not commonly found in traditional jewelry. Most diamonds used in jewelry have a slight presence of color. It is possible for diamonds to have a very high concentration of desirable color.
D, E and F color diamonds are considered colorless. Meaning that they have no yellow tint. They are the rarest and as such most valuable. Even though the difference in coloration between D & E (and even D-F) color diamonds is impossible to see (unless compared), there are vast differences in prices.
THE MILLENNIUM STAR
It is the second largest faceted D-Flawless diamond in the world; the 273.15 carat Centenary Diamond is the first. The Millennium Star is arguably the most beautiful diamond in the world, and one which experts have declared priceless.
The British Royal Crown is the owner of the most costly diamond in the world. The Kohinoor gem is currently on exhibit as the main diamond of the Queen Mother's Crown at the HM Tower of London.
BLUE DIAMONDS: THE SECOND RAREST COLOR
They owe their color to the presence of boron and/or hydrogen. Rated Type IIb Fancy, their grading scale ranges from Faint Blue to Fancy Dark Blue, and most have a secondary hue. A greyish-blue diamond can cost 1/7 of the cost of a Fancy Intense blue diamond of identical weight.