It’s easy to fall down a bit of a rabbit hole when exploring the world of diamonds.
Let’s be honest, you’re buying a diamond because they’re special, beautiful, elegant, and unique. They captivate us in a way that no other material can, and because they captivate us, we can’t help but look at the best and rarest diamond collections that the world has to offer. Not because we’re thinking about buying them, but just because we’ve looked, and we want to look further.
And we’re not going to stop you from doing that! One of the best things you can do before you buy a diamond is to gain as much knowledge as possible. Looking into the rarest natural diamond collections can give you some useful context to utilise when searching for your own, even if they’re completely outside of your budget and expectations.
In this article, we’re going to explore our favourite rare diamond collections and talk a little about why they’re such masterpieces of nature. But before we do that, let’s focus on the question of ‘rarity’ first.
The Question of Rare Collections
Rarity is relatively subjective in the diamond world. If you choose to shop for natural diamond special jewellery, on a diverse online platform like Best Brilliance, the first thing you should know is that every one of those diamonds is special.
No matter whether you’re going for a Sophia diamond engagement ring, or a callie diamond tennis necklace collier, every diamond has its own unique grading and characteristics that make it beautiful.
It doesn’t just depend on the diamond either. A 2-carat E VS2 set could be distinguished by a particularly rare halo setting, or it could be a diamond in a popular prong setting, but with a rare tapered-baguette diamond cut.
What matters, however, is that you choose a diamond that speaks to you. The grading is important, of course, as the 4 Cs will determine a diamond’s quality, but rarity and individualism can be found in a number of places. We just wanted to put that out there, as it can be quite important when you’re searching for a diamond of your own.
Coloured Diamond Collections
In terms of diamond collections that you don’t own, the rarest tend to be those with colour. It’s not a well-known fact, but diamonds actually come in a range of colours, from black, to orange, to pink. These comprise around 0.01% of the diamonds being mined worldwide, and that makes them incredibly valuable – although yellow, brown, and black collections are more easily available if you were thinking of buying a coloured diamond.
The most valuable coloured diamond collections consist of red diamonds, also known as ‘fancy reds’. The reason they’re so special is because they’re quite literally a masterpiece of nature – by which we mean they’re a work of art, rather than a beautiful failing!
Although other fancy colour diamonds are beautiful, their colour is still derived from impurities, such as boron and nitrogen gases. Red diamonds, on the other hand, are made entirely from carbon, just as any other colourless diamond would be.
The red is created by a rare occurrence, in which the light passes through an irregular lattice and bends to reflect a ruby-esque colour. The greater the hue, the rarer the diamond, and this is what makes them so valuable. For any diamond collection featuring a red diamond, prices can start from $100,000 and soar into the millions. For instance, the average cost of a red diamond per carat is $1 million.
Type IIA Diamond Collections
When you’re buying a diamond collection, whether it’s rings, necklaces, or pendants, you’ll be choosing a certain type of diamond. Type IA makes up around 95% of all natural diamonds, and this classifies the diamonds by the amount of impurities that they have both externally and internally.
You’ll recognise this when you look at the GIA grading system. When it comes to the Four Cs, colour is one of the most significant areas you need to look at. Each diamond has a grading from ‘D’ to ‘Z’, ranging between ‘colourless’ to ‘light’, and the ones that are colourless are some of the rarest diamonds you can find.
They are known as Type IIA, and they amount to only 1% to 2% of all mined diamonds on the planet. The reason they’re so special is that they have no nitrogen impurities, which means the vast majority of them are chemically pure and completely colourless. Of course, if you were to buy a colourless diamond, then you’d be spending a lot of money to attain it. But it can certainly be an investment that’s worthwhile for those who really want that technically perfect diamond.
Other types of rare diamond include Type IB, which amounts to less than 0.1% of all mined diamonds and is intensely coloured either yellow, orange, or brown. Type IIB diamonds are also extremely rare, have a blue hue to them, and are diamonds known to conduct electricity!
The Bottom Line
As we mentioned before, there are plenty of rare diamond collections out there. Some may be rarer than others, of course, and the diamond collections talked about are certainly wonders of nature. But every collection is special in its own way. So take your time, think about what you really want, and then go from there!
