Antwerp, 29 Sep 2009
Again an exceptional rough diamond of 507-carat view (exactly 507.55 Ct) is unearthed last week at the Cullinan mine in South Africa (where the famous Cullinan diamond was discovered in 1905)
This remarkable diamond will yield a record-breaking polished stone of the very best white colour and clarity.
Antwerp, April 3 2009
One of the rarest fancy vivid blue diamond, cut from the 26.58 carat rough stone was discovered in 2008 at Petra Diamonds’ Cullinan diamond mine in South Africa. This is one of the rarest blue diamonds ever found on earth. It is an internally flawless, cushion-shaped diamond weighing 7.03 carats.Expected to be sold at $5.8 to 8.5 million on Sotheby’s auction in May 2009 at Geneva View picture of this blue diamond This rare blue diamond discovered at the same Cullinan mine, last April 2009, was sold at auction in Hong Kong for a world record of more than US $ 10’000’000,00
Antwerp, March 21 2009
A small South Africa mining firm says it has unearthed world's largest diamond, with a size which is purported to be 7000 carats.
There is no information about the reported diamond find but I have my doubts that it is real -
Fake or real? Find out here
Read also at http://www.diamondsnews.com
Antwerp, September 21 2008
Again a very large diamond of 478 carats has been found at the Letseng mine in Lesotho.. This rare stone seems be be of exceptional white color (D) and Loupe Clean. His value value is estimated at several millions of dollars.
Probably this exceptional diamond will be cut by the most famous cutters in Antwerp, World Diamond Center.
To cut and polish this stone it can take about 2 years!
Antwerp 14nth November 2007
An exceptional 493 carat rough diamond (view image), D Color, named
The Letseng Legacy, digged out of the Lesotho mine in South Africa,
is sold today in Antwerp for 7.5 million Euro / US$ 10.4 million.
It will be cut by Antwerp skilled cutters.
Antwerp 9nth March 2007
Record yellow diamond found in Western Australia
Kimberley Diamond found an 18.5-carat yellow diamond at its
Ellendale Pipe 4 in Western Australia, the biggest ever found at the mine.
[AFNS] 09-03-2007 – Kimberley Diamond found an 18.5-carat yellow diamond
at its Ellendale Pipe 4 in Western Australia, the biggest ever found at the mine.
The average size of rough stones found at the Ellendale 4 Pipe has risen from 0.14 to 0.16 carats up to 0.21 carats as of February.
The previous record setter at Ellendale was a 14 carat diamond that sold for more than $400,000. One large stone found at Ellendale 4 in January weighed 12.4 carats, and there were nine other stones weighing more than 6 carats each found the same month.
Antwerp 26nth January 2007
Lesotho has announced the recovery of another big diamond of 216 carat white D color diamond at Leteng
Antwerp, 9nth October 2006
The biggest diamond of the 21nth century is found today in a Lesotho mine in South Africa
The weight of this stone is a 603 Carats uncut (rough) diamond named Promise of Lesotho.
This diamond is of an exceptional white color but the clarity is not as good as the famous Cullinan, a diamond of 3,106.75 carats.
The Promise of Lesotho was sold in Antwerp, the International and World Diamond Center, on Monday 9nth October 2006 to a South African Investment company to the price of US $ 12,360,000.00
The Promise of Lesotho will be cut and polished in Antwerp. The cutter could be Johnny Kneller...
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The Biggest diamond is found out of Earth
By Stephen Cauchi, Science Reporter, February 18, 2004
Confirming what the Beatles always knew, astronomers have actually found a diamond in the sky - directly above Australia. It is the biggest known diamond in the universe, in fact.
According to American astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a white dwarf star in the constellation of Centaurus, next to the Southern Cross, has been found to have a 3000-kilometer-wide core of crystallized carbon, or diamond.
It weighs 2.27 thousand trillion trillion tonnes - that's 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a 1 followed by 34 zeroes. The biggest earthly jewel is one of the British crown jewels, the 530-carat Star of Africa.
However, this cosmic jewel is hidden beneath a layer of hydrogen and helium gases, with the diamond core making up between 50 and 90 per cent of its mass. "It's the mother of all diamonds," said astronomer Travis Metcalfe, who led the team of researchers that studied the star.
"Some people refer to it as Lucy, in a tribute to the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
Known officially as BPM 37093, the star confirms a theory, first raised in the early 1960S, that cool white dwarfs should have a diamond core.
A white dwarf is what small stars, those up to about the size of the sun, turn into when they run out of nuclear fuel and die.
The intense pressures at the heart of such dead stars compress the carbon into diamond.
But confirming this theory has only been possible recently.
Lucy "pulsates", which means its light fluctuates at regular intervals. "By measuring these pulsation’s, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth," Dr Metcalfe said.
"We figured that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond."
This means that other white dwarfs must also have diamond cores. Our own sun will become a white dwarf when it dies in 5 billion years. Two billion years after that, its ember core will crystallize as well, leaving a giant diamond in the center of our solar system.
Vince Ford, a research officer at Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra, said astronomers, including Australians, had observed the star for more than eight years.
The star is about 50 light-years away (500 trillion kilometers) - a fair distances as far as stars go. This means it is about 400 times too faint to see with the naked eye.
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/
The biggest open diamond mine in the world is located in Mirny in East Siberia, Russia
Look at the city to feel the scale of the hole.
From: ajediam.com
I never thought I would, but I am finally getting married. Not because I couldn’t find someone, I just needed to find someone who shared my World of Warcraft habit. Anyway, I didn’t realize that finding a diamond engagement ring would be such a big deal. Pardon me, but I find the idea of choosing a piece of female jewelry the most boring thing this side of a medically induced coma.
I mean c’mon, what’s a diamond anyway? It’s just a piece of carbon, compressed deep inside the core of the Earth and the hardest thing known to man. But when I say it like that it sounds kinda cool.
My previous knowledge of diamonds before this research is the James Bond movie, Diamonds are Forever. I think there was also a Bond villain whose face was embedded with diamonds? Lets not forget the Pink Panther movies, and of course, the last Danny Ocean movie was all based around a diamond heist.
But listen, it’s not just movies that make diamonds interesting, the way they get diamonds out of the ground is also really cool.
Huge volcanic action pushes the precious stones up to the surface of the Earth in what are called Kmberlite pipes. All you have to do then is rip up the ground and dig them out. This means huge open cast mining techniques are used leaving massive, open wounds. As if the Planet developed a huge zit burst by mining and left as an everlasting scar.
Ekati diamond mine is one of the biggest in Canada. It is the most recent diamond mine on the Planet. It is both a surface and an underground min.
Its location is in the Arctic Circle and has to be supplied by frozen road in the winter, although it does have a runway big enough to take large jets.
World Diamond Production for 2006South Africa 67,000K cts
Russia 23,400K cts
Botswana 24,000K cts
Canada 12,350K cts
Australia 7,305K cts
Angola 7,000K cts
Congo 5,600K cts
Namibia 2,200K cts
Ghana 780,000 cts
Sierra Leone 360K cts
Guinea 355K cts
Central African Rep. 315K cts
Brazil 300K cts
Ivory Coast 200K cts
Tanzania 195,000 cts
China 100K cts
Venezuela 45K cts
Liberia 7K cts
Ekati Diamond Mine, Canada
Coordinates: 64°42′49″N 110°37′10″W
Google Map of Ekati diamond mine:
Imagery ©2009 DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Map data ©2009 Tele Atlas - Terms of Use
Map
Satellite
Hybrid
2000 ft
1 km
Imagery ©2009 DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Map data ©2009 Tele Atlas - Terms of Use
Map
Satellite
Hybrid
2000 ft
1 km
Official Ekati Diamond Mine Site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekati_Diamond_Mine
I mean c’mon, what’s a diamond anyway? It’s just a piece of carbon, compressed deep inside the core of the Earth and the hardest thing known to man. But when I say it like that it sounds kinda cool.
My previous knowledge of diamonds before this research is the James Bond movie, Diamonds are Forever. I think there was also a Bond villain whose face was embedded with diamonds? Lets not forget the Pink Panther movies, and of course, the last Danny Ocean movie was all based around a diamond heist.
But listen, it’s not just movies that make diamonds interesting, the way they get diamonds out of the ground is also really cool.
Huge volcanic action pushes the precious stones up to the surface of the Earth in what are called Kmberlite pipes. All you have to do then is rip up the ground and dig them out. This means huge open cast mining techniques are used leaving massive, open wounds. As if the Planet developed a huge zit burst by mining and left as an everlasting scar.
Ekati diamond mine is one of the biggest in Canada. It is the most recent diamond mine on the Planet. It is both a surface and an underground min.
Its location is in the Arctic Circle and has to be supplied by frozen road in the winter, although it does have a runway big enough to take large jets.
World Diamond Production for 2006South Africa 67,000K cts
Russia 23,400K cts
Botswana 24,000K cts
Canada 12,350K cts
Australia 7,305K cts
Angola 7,000K cts
Congo 5,600K cts
Namibia 2,200K cts
Ghana 780,000 cts
Sierra Leone 360K cts
Guinea 355K cts
Central African Rep. 315K cts
Brazil 300K cts
Ivory Coast 200K cts
Tanzania 195,000 cts
China 100K cts
Venezuela 45K cts
Liberia 7K cts
Ekati Diamond Mine, Canada
Coordinates: 64°42′49″N 110°37′10″W
Google Map of Ekati diamond mine:
Imagery ©2009 DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Map data ©2009 Tele Atlas - Terms of Use
Map
Satellite
Hybrid
2000 ft
1 km
Imagery ©2009 DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Map data ©2009 Tele Atlas - Terms of Use
Map
Satellite
Hybrid
2000 ft
1 km
Official Ekati Diamond Mine Site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekati_Diamond_Mine
The mine has given up over 3 tonnes of diamonds and finally closed in 1914.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley,_Northern_Cape
Diavik mine, Canada
The Diavik diamond mine has produced 8 million carats or about 1,600kg (3,500 lb) since production commenced in January 2003
Coordinates: 64°29′46″N 110°16′24″W
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diavik_Diamond_MineOffical site of the Diavik Diamond Mine
Argyle Diamond mine, Australia
Coordinates: 64°29′46″N 110°16′24″W
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diavik_Diamond_MineOffical site of the Diavik Diamond Mine
Argyle Diamond mine, Australia
Since the mine opened, over 700 million carats of diamonds have been recovered
http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/argyle/
Image source
Infomine Argyle mine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyle_diamond_mine
From: diamonds-usa.com
The Diamond Theft: Quick and Dirty
Vera Krupp never took her 33-carat diamond ring off her finger. The center stone was about the size of a marble. When two men broke into her ranch outside Las Vegas in 1959, they had to literally pry it off her finger, drawing blood.
Most diamonds thefts are far less glamorous than the 2008 Damiani raid (and far less brilliant). In 2005, two men stole a diamond from a mall jewelry store in Canada using the sleight-of-hand method. They asked to see a solitaire, and when the clerk turned her head, they switched it with a cubic zirconia. Mall security found the thieves attempting to do the same thing in another store at the same mall.
In another failed attempt at grand theft, a man in the United Kingdom pocketed a $16,000, 2-carat diamond ring from a jewelry store and got caught when he tried to sell the piece to another branch of the same store. The clerk called the cops while the guy waited patiently for her to weigh the ring in the back of the store.
Still, the most common methods of stealing diamonds often go unnoticed. There's a reason why lots of people insist on watching while a jeweler does repairs or resizes on valuable pieces: A jeweler can easily switch out a diamond for a cubic zirconia, or a perfect diamond for one that's flawed. A jeweler in Palm Beach went to jail in 2000 for switching out real diamonds for fakes when people came in for repairs. In all, he stole more than $80 million in jewels from a wide range of victims (including golfer Jack Nicklaus). However, unscrupulous jewelers can't steal anywhere near the number of diamonds as people working in diamond mines can.
Vera Krupp never took her 33-carat diamond ring off her finger. The center stone was about the size of a marble. When two men broke into her ranch outside Las Vegas in 1959, they had to literally pry it off her finger, drawing blood.
Most diamonds thefts are far less glamorous than the 2008 Damiani raid (and far less brilliant). In 2005, two men stole a diamond from a mall jewelry store in Canada using the sleight-of-hand method. They asked to see a solitaire, and when the clerk turned her head, they switched it with a cubic zirconia. Mall security found the thieves attempting to do the same thing in another store at the same mall.
In another failed attempt at grand theft, a man in the United Kingdom pocketed a $16,000, 2-carat diamond ring from a jewelry store and got caught when he tried to sell the piece to another branch of the same store. The clerk called the cops while the guy waited patiently for her to weigh the ring in the back of the store.
Still, the most common methods of stealing diamonds often go unnoticed. There's a reason why lots of people insist on watching while a jeweler does repairs or resizes on valuable pieces: A jeweler can easily switch out a diamond for a cubic zirconia, or a perfect diamond for one that's flawed. A jeweler in Palm Beach went to jail in 2000 for switching out real diamonds for fakes when people came in for repairs. In all, he stole more than $80 million in jewels from a wide range of victims (including golfer Jack Nicklaus). However, unscrupulous jewelers can't steal anywhere near the number of diamonds as people working in diamond mines can.
Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images
Workers in diamond mines like the DeBeers Wesselton mine in Kimberly, South Africa, have easy -- and regular -- access to uncut diamonds.
All along the South African coast, workers regularly walk off with millions of dollars in rough (uncut) stones. As they pull diamonds from the churned-up seabed gravel, they'll check to see if guards are watching, and if not, they'll slip one or two under their fingernails. Later, when it's safe, they swallow them, insert them into an orifice or load them onto homing pigeons. One thief in Namaqualand got caught when a guard spotted a homing pigeon trying unsuccessfully to take off. The man had loaded so many diamonds into his bird's harness, it couldn't get off the ground [source: The Atlantic].
In the workrooms, where the floor is strewn with small diamonds, employees wear glue-soled boots and walk right out of the mine with -- yes -- diamonds on the soles of their shoes. De Beers, the diamond conglomerate that runs the largest legitimate operations in South Africa (not the conflict diamond operations run by South African rebel groups), randomly X-rays workers on their way out. Diamonds fluoresce when exposed to X-rays. But due to the of the risk of daily radiation exposure, De Beers can only scan randomly, so lots of those pocketed diamonds make it out mines and workrooms.
Theft from the mines is just part of life on the Diamond Coast. DeBeers spends millions of dollars every week buying stolen diamonds back so they don't flood the market and cause diamond prices to tank. They estimate that workers steal up to 30 percent of the mines' yield [source: The Atlantic]. In these mining towns, it's easy to sell a stolen diamond.
Even with hauls in the millions, it's not the quiet thefts that draw real attention. It's the big, glamorous heists -- ones where thieves walk off with bags of diamonds in a brilliant show of patience and planning. So, what's the most unbelievable diamond heist on the record books? Probably the one in which the thief charmed his way into the safe.
Workers in diamond mines like the DeBeers Wesselton mine in Kimberly, South Africa, have easy -- and regular -- access to uncut diamonds.
All along the South African coast, workers regularly walk off with millions of dollars in rough (uncut) stones. As they pull diamonds from the churned-up seabed gravel, they'll check to see if guards are watching, and if not, they'll slip one or two under their fingernails. Later, when it's safe, they swallow them, insert them into an orifice or load them onto homing pigeons. One thief in Namaqualand got caught when a guard spotted a homing pigeon trying unsuccessfully to take off. The man had loaded so many diamonds into his bird's harness, it couldn't get off the ground [source: The Atlantic].
In the workrooms, where the floor is strewn with small diamonds, employees wear glue-soled boots and walk right out of the mine with -- yes -- diamonds on the soles of their shoes. De Beers, the diamond conglomerate that runs the largest legitimate operations in South Africa (not the conflict diamond operations run by South African rebel groups), randomly X-rays workers on their way out. Diamonds fluoresce when exposed to X-rays. But due to the of the risk of daily radiation exposure, De Beers can only scan randomly, so lots of those pocketed diamonds make it out mines and workrooms.
Theft from the mines is just part of life on the Diamond Coast. DeBeers spends millions of dollars every week buying stolen diamonds back so they don't flood the market and cause diamond prices to tank. They estimate that workers steal up to 30 percent of the mines' yield [source: The Atlantic]. In these mining towns, it's easy to sell a stolen diamond.
Even with hauls in the millions, it's not the quiet thefts that draw real attention. It's the big, glamorous heists -- ones where thieves walk off with bags of diamonds in a brilliant show of patience and planning. So, what's the most unbelievable diamond heist on the record books? Probably the one in which the thief charmed his way into the safe.
