Long before they’re polished and set in gold, the world’s greatest gems sleep beneath mountains, rivers, and deserts. Their origins are as captivating as their glow: volcanic depths, ocean floors, and ...

Imagine this, a young gemologist frowned as she inspected a ruby. “Without documentation, this could be from anywhere,” she sighed, articulating a frustration that haunts the global gemstone market: ...

The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History acquired one of the world's rarest gemstones.Natural red diamonds are some of the rarest gems on Earth, and the Winston Red Diamond is exceptional ...

A Carthage man may have unearthed one of the rarest gemstones in the world — not in a mine, but in his own front yard. Robert Lewis Jr. says he found an unusual black rock just steps from his home ...

Across the hills of Kenya and Tanzania, two gemstones capture the continent’s natural brilliance and enduring mystique: Tanzanite and Tsavorite. Both discovered within a few years of each other in the ...

The world’s most expensive substances command their prices for very different reasons. Some, like rare gemstones, are valuable because nature produces them in such limited quantities. Others, such as ...

Half a century ago, when bell-bottoms ruled fashion and disco dominated dance floors, somewhere in East Africa, Antony Zagoritis was hard at work laying the foundation for what would become a jewel in ...