Precious Metals vs. Pricey Gemstones: There Is No Contest When it Comes To Value (3K Views)

Painite

Until a few years ago it was considered one of the rarest minerals in the world. New finds however have quickly changed that.

Nowadays, while still rare, you can buy faceted painite for $200 per carat. However, virtually all faceted painite on the market today is heavily included and is so dark that it looks brown to black, rather than orange or red so when a faceted red painite with high clarity is finally found it is quite likely that it will still sell for an exorbitant amount. Until that time it is impossible to place a value on it that will give it a spot in this list.

Serendibite

For some reason many lists claim that serendibite is worth close to $2 million per carat which is strange, as one of only three serendibite thought to be in existence before 2005 was sold for around $14,000 per carat.

Prices plummeted as new finds came to light in Burma. These new stones can be bought for under $50 per carat, hardly worthy of inclusion in this list but there is one major difference between the first serendibite stones and the new finds though. The Burma variety is dark black, while the Sri Lanka variety is blue to blue-green.

If high quality serendibite is found in lighter colors it will likely still sell for thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars per carat. Until that time we decided against including it in the regular list.

[The above article is presented by  Lorimer Wilson, editor of  www.munKNEE.com and the FREE Market Intelligence Report newsletter (sample here) and may have been edited ([ ]), abridged (…) and/or reformatted (some sub-titles and bold/italics emphases) for the sake of clarity and brevity to ensure a fast and easy read. The author’s views and conclusions are unaltered and no personal comments have been included to maintain the integrity of the original article. This paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement.]

Editor’s Note:

Carats in Grams

Abbreviated “ct.” and spelled with a “c” carat is a measure of weight used for gemstones. One carat is equal to 1/5 of a gram (200 milligrams). As such precious metals, by comparison, are relatively cheap in comparison given the fact that the least expensive gems on the list above start at $7,500/g while gold, for example, only costs $40-41/gram! 

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