People have long known the saying “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” But this may be changing. There’s a new stone on the gem market, tanzanite, and it is giving diamonds some serious competition.
Tanzanite was one of a number of gems discovered in East Africa in the 1960s. The new colors and varieties changed the gem market. But the real gem among these stones was tanzanite, discovered in 1967 in Tanzania. The stone was named after its country of origin by New York’s Tiffany and Co. which introduced it to the world. It draws one’s attention quickly with its color—blue, purple or bronze, depending on the direction it is viewed from.
More important for its value, though, is its rarity. Tanzanite has been found in only one small area, near Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania. And its supply will probably be fully mined in the next two decades.
As one mining official puts it, “It should never have really occurred in the first place. It did occur. And only this one deposit on this entire planet that is known…makes it more than a thousand times rarer than diamonds. And certainly within the next 15 to 20 years, there will be no more tanzanite to be mined.”
The current value of the tanzanite market, at U.S. $10 billion, is equivalent to that of diamonds. And so another saying “Diamonds are forever” may lose some of its meaning.
