507-Carat Rough Diamond Found

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Sep 29th 2009 at 10:02PM

It looks like a chunk of clouded ice but the stone shown at right is a 507-carat rough diamond found at the Petra Diamonds Cullinan Mine in South Africa. The 507.55 carat stone is believed to be of exceptional color and clarity, and is most likely a Type II diamond. The rough was found as part of a run that also included a 168-carat piece of rough and two other stones of 58.5 and 53.3 carats. A lucky day indeed, the stone is one of the top 20 largest high-quality rough diamonds ever found making it incredibly rare.

The Cullinan Mine has yielded some of the world's great diamonds including the largest "gem-quality" stone ever recovered, the "Cullinan," 3,106 carats rough, and was the source for the Golden Jubilee, at 755 carats rough, and the Centenary, at 599 carats rough. Cullinan also produced the piece of rough that became the Taylor-Burton diamond, a stone that is 69 carats polished. The diamonds will be analyzed by a team of experts and then the long process of determining how to best cut them can begin.

[via National Jeweler]

Tags: diamond mine, DiamondMine, diamonds, south africa, SouthAfrica

Filed under: Jewelry

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jordanlll Oct 8th 2009 12:51AM

A diamond as big as an egg? How much would that cost? For sure, even you do not work for the rest of your life you can live. Everyone dreams of striking it rich – like finding a 507-carat diamond. That's just what the independent diamond mining company Petra did. Their strategy is to buy smaller mines or older mines from De Beers in South Africa and other locations, and one of their mines turned up a 507-carat diamond. The mine is the same one where the Cullinan Diamond, the largest diamond ever found, was unearthed. It is now part of the British Crown Jewels. The company took a hard hit after last years' collapse of the diamond market, and despite moving over a million carats of stones, has debts of almost $100 million. A 507-carat diamond might keep them from needing a cash loan.
URL(http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2009/09/30/507-carat-diamond-fix-finances-mining-company)