10 Most Expensive Gemstones on Earth #1 Can’t Be Bought

$71 million. That's the highest price ever paid for a gemstone at auction. Another stone, weighing less than 10 carats, sold for more than $32 million. But one of the most famous gems on Earth has no price tag at all. So what makes a gemstone worth millions? And why does the final gemstone have no price at all? Today, we're counting down 10 extraordinary gemstones. Nine have documented auction prices. The last one is in a category of its own. Let's start with number 10. Number 10. The Aga Khan Emerald. You've seen emeralds before. In engagement rings, in pendants, in a grandmother's jewelry box. So how does one emerald sell for almost $9 million? In November 2024, At Christie's in Geneva, a 37-carat Colombian emerald, set in a Cartier brooch, sold for about $8.86 million. Part of the answer is the stone itself. It's large, richly colored, and unusually clear for an emerald. That last detail matters more than most people realize. Emeralds almost always grow with tiny fractures and inclusions inside them. It's so common that the trade has a word for it, the emeralds. To make those cracks less visible, many emeralds are filled with oil or resin. That's called clarity enhancement, and it's a normal accepted practice. But according to laboratory reports, this emerald showed no clarity enhancement. A stone this size, this clean, without help, is extraordinarily hard to find. The other part of the answer is its story. The brooch belonged to Nina Dyer, a fashion model who married into two of the wealthiest families in Europe. The emerald is linked to her husband, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, and that's where its name comes from. So the buyer wasn't just paying for a green stone. They were paying for size, purity, and a documented history, all in one piece. Without that history, it would still be an exceptional emerald. With it, the stone also became a piece of jewelry history. If you have an old green ring at home, that's worth remembering. Color alone doesn't make an emerald valuable. What it is, whether it's been treated, and where it came from, all decide the price. Almost $9 million is a remarkable number for an emerald. But our next stone sold for three times as much, and it doesn't have any color at all. Number 9. The Winston Legacy Diamond. A white diamond, the most familiar gemstone in the world. Millions of people wear one every day, so why would one sell for nearly $27 million? In May 2013, at Christie's in Geneva, a pear-shaped colorless diamond Weighing 101.73 carats, came up for auction. It sold for about $26.74 million, a world auction record for a colorless diamond at the time. The buyer was Harry Winston, one of the most famous names in fine jewelry. The company renamed it the Winston Legacy. To understand the price, you need two grades. The first is color. Colorless diamonds are graded on a letter scale. And the very top grade is D. A D color diamond shows no detectable trace of yellow or brown. It looks like pure, icy light, with nothing to soften or hide what's inside. The second is Clarity. The highest Clarity grade is Flawless. That means a trained grader, looking through ten times magnification, can't find any inclusions inside the stone, or blemishes on its surface. Each of those grades is rare on its own. Getting both in a small diamond is impressive. Now imagine getting both in a diamond that weighs more than a hundred carats. That's the real secret of the Winston legacy. Its value doesn't come from an unusual color or a famous owner from centuries ago. It comes from enormous size and near-perfect purity in the same stone. The bigger a diamond gets, the more chances nature has to leave a flaw behind. This one got through with none. So far, size seems to be winning. Bigger stone, bigger price. But the next gemstone weighs a quarter as much as the Winston Legacy, and it sold for even more. Number eight, the Sunrise Ruby 25.59 carats. That's the Sunrise Ruby, a large stone for a ruby, but tiny, next to a 100-carat diamond. And yet in May 2015, at Sotheby's in Geneva, it sold for about $30.27 million. That's more than $3 million above the Winston Legacy. How does a smaller stone beat a bigger one? It starts with color. The most prized rubies have a shade the trade calls pigeon's blood. It's a pure, deep red, with a glowing intensity, almost as if the stone is lit from inside. The Sunrise Ruby was described as exactly that color. It was mounted in a ring made by Cartier. Then, there's where it came from. The Sunrise Ruby came from Myanmar, the country once known as Burma. For generations, Burmese rubies have set the standard. Some of them contain a natural chemistry that helps them glow red even in ordinary daylight. And then there's what was never done to it. Most rubies on the market have been heated. Heat treatment can improve their color and clarity, and it's widely accepted as long as it's disclosed. But a large, fine ruby that shows no evidence of treatment at all is a different thing entirely. Its beauty is entirely natural. Put those three together, color, origin, and untreated condition, and you have a stone that sold for well over a million dollars per carat. Its name has a poetic touch, too. It was named after a poem by the 13th century Persian poet Rumi. With the Winston Legacy, perfection drove the price. With rubies, The value lives in the color, and how natural that color is. Ruby rings are common enough that most of us have seen one, very few people will ever see one like this. Red might seem like the ultimate luxury color, but the next stone is a different color, weighs less than 10 carats, and sold for even more. Number 7. The Zoe Diamond 9.75 carats. Not even 10. Smaller than many famous engagement diamonds you've seen in the news. But in November 2014, at Sotheby's in New York, this pear-shaped blue diamond sold for about $32.65 million. It came from the collection of Rachel Bunny Mellon, an American philanthropist and art collector. After the sale, it was renamed the Zoe Diamond. So why is a blue diamond worth so much more than a white one? A colorless diamond is made almost entirely of carbon. But in a natural blue diamond, a tiny trace of another element, boron, gets trapped inside the crystal as it forms deep underground. That trace of boron is what turns the stone blue. Only a tiny fraction of the diamonds ever mined are blue. Even among blue diamonds, color strength matters enormously. Many blue diamonds are pale, grayish, or barely tinted. The Zoe was graded Fancy. Fancy Vivid Blue. Fancy is the tradesword for a diamond with natural color. Vivid is near the top of the scale for intensity. It means the blue is strong, saturated, and unmistakable. Now go back to the Winston Legacy for a moment. That colorless diamond weighed more than a hundred carats. The Zoe weighs less than one tenth as much, and the Zoe sold for nearly six million dollars more. Size, it turns out, is only one part of the equation. Put the right color in a diamond, and a small stone can outrun a giant. So, after a blue diamond like that, you might expect blue diamonds to take over this countdown. But first, ruby comes back, and this time it rewrote the record book. Number 6. The Estrella de Fura In July 2022, miners in Mozambique pulled something remarkable out of the ground. It was a rough ruby weighing about 101 carats. Uncut, unpolished. Still looking more like a lump of red rock than a jewel. The company that found it named it the Estrela de Fura, which means Star of Fura in Portuguese. But a rough stone isn't a finished gemstone. Before it could be sold, someone had to decide how to cut it, and cutting is a gamble. Every cut removes material. Cutters grind away cracks, inclusions, and awkward shapes to unlock the color and brilliance inside. Cut too cautiously, and the stone looks dull. Cut too aggressively, and you throw away weight, which means money. The cutters chose beauty over weight. The 101-carat rough was cut into a finished ruby of 55.22 carats. Nearly half the original weight was gone. But the finished ruby went on to set a world auction record. In June 2023, At Sotheby's in New York, the Estrela de Fura sold for about $34.8 million. According to laboratory reports, the finished stone showed no indications of heating, and at 55 carats, it was more than twice the size of the Sunrise Ruby. For eight years, the famous Burmese Sunrise Ruby had held the Ruby auction record. Now it belonged to a stone from Mozambique, a source that has only become important to the Ruby world in recent decades. Think about what that means. Burma had been the legendary name in rubies for generations. Then a stone from a much newer source walked in and took the crown. So a gem's value can be created in the cutting room. And a famous origin doesn't guarantee a permanent place at the top. A single ruby had now reached almost 35 million dollars. The next stone pushed past 40 million. And it spent decades hidden from the market before anyone got the chance to bid. Number 5. The Blue Royale. Most of the gemstones in this video had been seen, studied, or sold before they reached their record-breaking moment. The Blue Royale was different. For decades, it sat in a private collection, out of public view. While other famous blue diamonds were being bought, sold, and renamed, this one stayed put. Dealers and collectors had little or no chance to buy it. Many may never have seen it at all. Then, in November 2023, it came up for auction at Christie's in Geneva. The Blue Royale weighs 17.61 carats. Like the Zoe, it was graded Fancy Vivid Blue. And it was also graded Internally Flawless, meaning a grader using 10 times magnification found no inclusions inside the stone. But what made the room pay attention wasn't just the grade, it was the timing. A stone that has spent decades in private hands doesn't come with a second chance. If you miss it at auction, it can disappear into another private collection for just as long. And the bidding showed it. The contest took only a few minutes. When it ended, the Blue Royale had sold for about $44.01 million. This is where scarcity takes on a new meaning. Rarity isn't only about how few stones like this exist in nature. It's also about how few of them ever come up for sale. Many of the world's great gems stay in private collections for generations, passed down, locked away, and rarely shown. When one finally appears, buyers know the next chance could be years away, or never. So the price reflects two kinds of rarity at once, a stone nature almost never makes, and an auction that almost never happens. $44 million sounds hard to beat, but eight years earlier, another blue diamond had already sold for more, and it was smaller than the Blue Royale. Number four, the Blue Moon of Josephine, 12.03 carats. That's roughly two-thirds the weight of the Blue Royale. And in November 2015, at Sotheby's in Geneva, this blue diamond sold for about $48.47 million. To see why that's so remarkable, we need a different way of measuring value. Until now, we've mostly looked at total price, but in the gem world, there's a second number that often tells the real story. Price per carat. You take the total price and divide it by the stone's weight. That lets you compare a small stone with a large one on equal terms. Remember the Winston Legacy, the 100 carat colorless diamond? It worked out to roughly $260,000 per carat. The Blue Moon of Josephine sold for about $4.03 million per carat. That's more than 15 times as much for every single carat. At the time, it was a world auction record for price per carat for any gemstone. So where does the name come from? The stone was called the Blue Moon, partly because of how rare it is. A blue diamond of this quality appears about as often as the old saying suggests. once in a blue moon. After the auction, the buyer added a new name. Josephine, after his daughter. Like the Blue Royale, it was graded Fancy Vivid Blue and Internally Flawless. Same color category, same clarity grade. Yet the smaller stone sold for more. When a gemstone reaches the very top of quality, size stops being the main story. Every carat becomes a small fortune on its own. Four million dollars per carat was a staggering benchmark. It held as an auction record for years. It took a pink diamond to finally break it. Number three, the Williamson Pink Star, If blue diamonds are rare, intensely pink diamonds belong in the same rarefied class. Scientists still don't fully agree on what causes pink color in diamonds. Unlike blue, it isn't linked to a trace element. One leading explanation is that enormous pressure deep underground distorted the diamond's crystal structure, changing the way it absorbs light. Whatever the cause, it rarely produces a strong, pure pink. Most pink diamonds are pale. Small or mixed with brown, a pink diamond graded fancy vivid with intense color is exceptional; a large one is almost unheard of. The Williamson Pink Star weighs 11.15 carats, it's fancy vivid pink and internally flawless. It came from the Williamson mine in Tanzania, a mine famous for producing pink diamonds. Its name combines that mine with the most famous pink diamond of all. The stone will meet at number two, in October 2022 it came up for auction at Sotheby's in Hong Kong. And the bidding was intense. Several collectors competed for the stone, pushing the price higher and higher. When the hammer finally came down, the Williamson Pink Star had sold for about $57.74 million. Now look at the size. The Williamson Pink Star is lighter than the Blue Moon of Josephine, yet it sold for over $9 million more. That makes its price per carat about $5.18 million, a new world auction record for any gemstone. That's more than a million dollars per carat above the Blue Moon of Josephine. This is what happens when exceptional color meets real competition. The competition pushed the price to an extraordinary level. At the top of the market, a gemstone is worth what the most determined buyer is willing to pay. And when several determined buyers want the same stone, prices can climb to places no estimate predicts. The Williamson Pink Star set the record for price per carat, but its namesake, a much larger pink diamond, still holds the record for the highest total price of any gemstone ever sold at auction. Number 2. The CTF Pink Star, 59.60 carats. That's more than 5 times the weight of the Williamson Pink Star, and it's graded the same way. Fancy, vivid pink. Internally flawless. We've just seen how rare that combination is in an 11 carat diamond. Now imagine it in a stone weighing nearly 60 carats. It's the largest internally flawless, Fancy, vivid pink diamond that GIA, the Gemological Institute of America, has ever graded. Its journey to the auction room wasn't simple. The rough stone was mined in Africa by De Beers and weighed more than 100 carats. The cutters spent around two years shaping it into the oval you see today. For years, it was known simply as the Pink Star. In 2013, it was sold at auction in Geneva for more than $80 million. But that sale fell through. The buyer couldn't pay, and the diamond went back to the auction house. So the record that seemed to have been set wasn't real yet. Four years later, in April 2017, the Pink Star got a second chance, this time at Sotheby's in Hong Kong. The buyer was Chow Tai Fook, the Hong Kong jewelry company. The price was about $71.2 million, and this time the sale went through. $71 million for a stone you could close your hand around. It became the highest price ever paid for a gemstone or jewel at auction. A new owner renamed it the CTF Pink Star, after the company's initials. Interestingly, its price per carat is lower than the Williamson Pink Stars, around $1.2 million. But that's the nature of record-breaking stones this large. The total is the record. There's simply nothing else like it. Every quality we've seen in this countdown—natural rare color, near-perfect clarity, huge size, and a market full of buyers— came together in one stone, and the result was the biggest number in gemstone auction history. $71 million, the highest auction price ever paid for a gemstone. So what could possibly be number one? The answer is a diamond whose owner won't even name a price. Number one, the Hope Diamond. In Washington, D.C., inside the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, a deep blue diamond sits behind glass. It weighs 45.52 carats. It's surrounded by a ring of white diamonds and hangs from a necklace. This is the Hope Diamond. And unlike every other stone in this video, it has a different shape. It has no recent sale price. To understand why, you have to follow its journey. Its blue color comes from Boron, the same element behind the Zoe, the Blue Royale, and the Blue Moon. But the Hope's story began centuries before any of them. In the 1600s, a French merchant named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier brought a large blue diamond from India to France. He sold it to King Louis XIV. It was later cut and became part of the French crown jewels, known as the French Blue. Then, during the French Revolution, the crown jewels were stolen. The French Blue disappeared. Years later, a large blue diamond surfaced in London. It's believed to have been cut from the missing French Blue. It eventually belonged to a wealthy banking family named Hope. Which is how the stone got its name. It passed through the hands of dealers and collectors. In the early 20th century, the jeweler Pierre Cartier sold it to an American heiress named Evelyn Walsh McLean, who wore it for decades. After her death, Harry Winston bought her jewelry collection, including the Hope. And in 1958, he donated the diamond to the Smithsonian. He sent it by registered mail. Yes, the same Harry Winston company that, decades later, bought the Winston legacy. You may have heard that the Hope diamond is cursed. That legend has followed it for more than a century, and it helped make the stone famous. But much of the curse story was spread through newspapers and dealers, and it isn't supported by the documented history. It's a legend, not a fact. What is a fact is just as fascinating. Under ultraviolet light, the Hope Diamond glows a fiery red-orange for a short time after the light is switched off. Now think about what makes it number one. It isn't the biggest stone in this countdown, it weighs about 14 carats less than the CTF Pink Star, and it hasn't set an auction record. So its place at the top has nothing to do with size, and nothing to do with a winning bid. Every other stone in this countdown had a moment when anyone with enough money could bid. The Hope Diamond belongs to a public. Music Museum. Held for everyone who walks through the door. The Smithsonian describes it as priceless and says it is not for sale, so no one can tell you what it would fetch today. Not because it's worthless, but because no one is being given the chance to bid. Outro the CTF Pink Star has a price, $71.2 million, paid at an auction in Hong Kong. The Hope Diamond doesn't. Nine of these stones were won in auction rooms by whoever was willing to go highest. The tenth was given away, and it has stayed in the same museum. Every gem on this list could be measured in dollars at some point. The last one can only be measured by what it means to the people who come to see it. So, if you could own just one of these ten gemstones, which would you choose? Tell me in the comments.