10 Most Rare and Valuable Gemstones

As a species, we’ve always had a fascination with gemstones. We’ve mined them from the ground, polished and cut them, collected them, and even used them as currency.

Even in a modern world there are some stones that simply defy classification. They’re so valuable, and so rare, that they’ll always be known as record breaking stones.

Here are 10 of the most famous ones..

10. Dom Pedro Aquamarine – est. $10-15 million

The Dom Pedro Aquamarine is the world’s largest cut faceted aquamarine gem. Originally it was cut from a crystal that weighed around 45 kilograms and was almost a metre in length. Mined in Brazil sometime around the 1980s, the stone was named after two Brazilian emperors. Blue-green in colour, it was cut into an obelisk of 10,363 carats by Bernd Munsteiner to be 36cm tall and 10cm wide. Amazingly, this expensive stone was donated to the Smithsonian Institute by its owners and is currently being housed at the Museum of Natural History.