You don’t have to be a geologist to marvel in awe at a diamond almost the size of a tennis ball. A 1,111-carat diamond was recently discovered by Lucara Diamond Corporation at the Karowe Mine in Botswana. Lucara explains, “It is the second largest gem-quality diamond to be recovered through a modern processing facility,” making it the largest find in over a century.
The largest diamond ever found was a 3,106 carat Cullinan diamond that was unearthed in South Africa in 1905. It was cut into smaller pieces that were used as part of the Great Star of Africa for the British royalty’s crown jewels.
Lucara made the discovery with a device called the “Large Diamond XRT machine.” XRT is short for “x-ray transmission.” The device uses XRT technology to recover gemstones and sort valuable stones such as loose diamonds and gems from waste rock. The unsorted material is fed into the machine as a sensor system inspects and separates stones that have different properties than the host rock. The Karowe diamond mine is the first to use XRT technology. Lucara also announced that they had recovered an 813 carat stone and a 374 carat stone that were found from the south lobe of mine. The mine itself has three kimberlite pipes (the north, south, and center lobes) and possesses roughly 6.3 million carats of diamonds in reserves.
The 1,111 carat diamond clocks in at 65 by 40 millimeters in size and was put in the “IIa” category meaning that it is nearly free of impurities.
It is nearly impossible to place a value on the majestic loose diamond. In addition to carats, a stone’s value is dependent on its color, clarity, and cut. To put this into perspective, in July of 2015 Lucara sold a 341.9-carat Type IIa diamond for $20.6 million. That is $60,000 per carat, which could value the new Lucara diamond at roughly $66.66 million dollars. However, the overall value will be dependent on the size and quality of the polished stones that can be cut from it.
William Lamb, CEO of Lucara, says the diamond will most likely not be sold this year. It is too large to fit into their scanner and will need to be transported to Antwerp, Belgium for proper appraisal in their larger scanner to help analyze its specs. After the unearthing of a profound loose diamond it is not uncommon for jewelers or a group of investors to purchase the stone and use computerized scanning to determine how to cut the stone into several pieces. This will help them assess exactly how many pieces they can feasibly fashion to get the most out of their investment. However, there is much speculation that the end buyer will most likely be a diamond collector who takes pride in the prestige of owning the largest diamond that is not part of the royal collection. Only time will tell who can call themselves the owner of the world’s largest diamond.