Are You Green With Envy For Green Diamonds?
Green diamonds traditionally symbolise peace, tranquillity, growth and fertility. They are amongst the rarest and the most highly-valued natural fancy colored diamonds available ranking alongside blue, purple, pink, and violet diamonds in terms of rarity value. However, due to the popularity of blue and pink diamonds they have become somewhat obscured, although in actual fact they are rarer and this is largely due to the way in which green diamonds are formed. Here we take a closer look at this most intriguing of the natural fancy colored diamonds:
In short: Natural green diamonds are among the rarest fancy color diamonds, with fewer than a dozen GIA-graded specimens reaching major auctions each year. Color comes from natural gamma radiation altering the crystal lattice over millions of years. Fancy Vivid Green stones command $1–3 million per carat at auction. Lab-grown green diamonds offer the same visual effect at 90%+ savings — typically $2,000–$5,000 per carat for 1.00ct.
Diamonds are formed when organised carbon atoms are pressurised and bound together in the earth’s core. As we know colorless diamonds are chemically pure and structurally perfect. Whilst in comparison natural colored diamonds are formed when impurities occur in the chemical bonding, or defects in the crystalline structure. However, green diamonds are the exception. They acquire their unique color from an extremely rare process of natural irradiation that occurs where carbon deposits in the earth contain highly radioactive material.
A natural green diamond will be exposed to radiation over a period of thousands of years during its formation underground. The radiation, usually coming from uranium near the Earth’s surface, has the innate ability to displace carbon atoms in the diamond from their positions. This changes the stones ability to absorb and refract light which allows it to reflect the green color on its surface. The longer the diamond is exposed to radiation, the more vivid the green color becomes. The fact that these conditions have to be absolutely perfect for a green diamond to form is the reason that natural green diamonds are a genuinely rare occurrence and this is what makes this gemstone so intriguing.
