Trivia: 15 Facts

Amazing facts about diamonds:

1. With more than 500 years of being the center for diamonds and the diamond trade, Antwerp is up until today a major hub of the industry: About 80% of all rough diamonds (per volume) and more than 50% of all polished diamonds are traded in Antwerp´s four (!) diamond exchanges.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Today about 90% of all diamonds in volume are cut in India. In terms of value 60% of all diamonds are cut in India. Usually loupe-clean diamonds above two carats are cut and polished in Antwerp, Israel or New York.
   
   
   
   
   
3. An estimated 5 million people have access to appropriate healthcare globally thanks to revenues from diamonds.
   
   
   
4. Conflict diamonds have been reduced from about 3% to considerably less than 1% since the implementation of the Kimberley Process in 2003.
   
   
5. The most expensive diamond ever sold was the Pink Star which yielded an incredible $ 82 Million at a Sotheby´s auction in 2013.
   
   
6. The largest polished diamond is the Golden Jubilee with 545.6 carats and is part of the Thai crown jewels. The precious stone is estimated to be worth around $ 12 Million.
   
   
   
   
   
7. The second-largest polished diamond was part of Cullinan I and is now known as the “Greater Star of Africa” weighing 530,2 carats and belongs to the English crown jewels.
8. The largest ever found diamond is not on earth, but about 50 lightyears away from earth: In 2004 astronomers found a white dwarf star as a chunk of crystallized carbon of 4,000 km in diameter and named it “Lucy” according to the Beatles song “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”.
9. World production of diamonds in 2014 was about 125 Million carats; more than half of which came from Africa, one third originates in Russia and the rest from Canada and Australia. We are talking about only 25 tons.
10. One carat equals 0.2 grams, i.e. a five carats diamond weighs exactly one gram. If color, clarity and cut are equal the price of a diamond increases exponentially with carat weight. A one carat diamond costs more than four quarter carat stones.
    
    
    
    
    
11. Blue and red are the rarest colored diamonds. Less than 0.1% of all natural diamonds show blue color.
    
    
12. America buys more than 40 percent of the world’s gem quality diamonds.
    
    
13. When talking about color in diamonds one actually refers to a diamonds lack of color. The color scale for white diamonds reaches from D to M.
    
    
    
    
    
    
14. Diamonds are billions of years old—in some cases more than three billion years old.
    
    
15. Graphite (as contained in a pencil) and diamond both are 100% carbon. However, due to the immense heat and pressure within the earth´s crust diamonds turn into their unique form and become hardest mineral on earth.