16 Rarest and Most Expensive Mining Finds

It’s kinda weird, but mining finds are often some of the most exciting discoveries. Ready for a treasure hunt? Hmm, or maybe we can just take a look at what other people found? Without leaving our comfort zone, you know.

Tanzanite is a stone that’s more valuable and expensive than diamonds. This gem was first discovered in 1967 in — the name probably gives it away — Tanzania. Tanzanite became popular after Tiffany and Co. began to use it in their jewelry.

The stone costs $200-350 per carat. This number isn’t that high compared to other gems on my list, but experts say that the stone’s price will rocket up in the next 20–25 years. Its deep blue-violet hue differs the gem from others. Plus, it can only be mined in one place on Earth.

The next gemstone is red beryl. Although they are not as rare as some others, like black opal, it’s hard to find gem-quality ones. And you can only come across red beryl on a mountain in Utah. Yet, with its few different shades of a darker red, this gemstone is one of the rarest in the whole beryl family. Prices for this red beauty can reach up to $10,000 per carat — but good luck finding it on sale.

With their mesmerizing green hues, emeralds are quite popular. Most emeralds have minor imperfections. Like me. On rare occasions, a natural emerald without any flaws appears on the market. It can be sold for jaw-dropping money.

For instance, when the historic “Rockefeller Emerald” was auctioned off, the 18-carat gemstone was purchased for $5.5 million — which is $305,000 per carat. This way, it broke all records, being the highest price-per-carat emerald ever sold.

Opal is a valuable multicolored stone found mostly in Australia. The most common types are white, gray, and green opals. But here, I want to focus on the rarest one: black opal. Black opal has many colors in it, like a rainbow. And each time you look at it, you may see some other colors that you haven’t noticed before.

It’s really hard to mine this one. There’s no guarantee at all that you’ll find it. This “Virgin Rainbow” opal is valued at $1 million and has become the world’s most expensive opal. It was discovered in 2003 by John Dunstan. What’s even cooler is that it was found inside an ancient cuttlefish skeleton. Who would think of looking there?

This is a ring with the Sunrise ruby. Its name comes from a poem with the same title written in the 13th century. What makes this stone famous is not its name, though. It was sold in 2015 for $30 million, which made it the most expensive ruby ever. The buyer’s identity was kept secret. Comment below if it’s you!

It isn’t just gemstones that cost a fortune. Here is one of the most expensive metals in the world — rhodium. It’s not as well-known and popular as, let’s say, platinum. But it is gradually becoming one of the hottest things on the market. 80% of the demand for rhodium comes from the global automotive industry.

So, it’s wanted, but it’s super rare. Annual rhodium production is around 30 tons. For comparison, gold miners dig up between 2,500 and 3,000 tons of this precious metal every year. Now, you can see why rhodium is so pricey.

The term “gold nugget” makes me smile and feel hungry at the same time because it’s too close to chicken nuggets. Really? Yeah. Anyway, the world’s largest gold nugget is now older than a century.

Two miners found this huge chunk of precious metal in the gold fields of Australia in 1869. It weighed 214 pounds and was 24 inches long. The miners named it “Welcome Stranger.” These two people instantly became rich. In those days, you could turn into a millionaire overnight.

Nowadays, we have Lotto. Very unlikely but possible. One of the grandchildren of the miners said that when people heard her name, they always asked her where the gold was or if she was rich. She answered that she wasn’t. In fact, she didn’t even have any jewelry made from the Welcome Stranger. That’s a shame.

Imagine you’re 12 and find a diamond worth $15,000 while you’re walking in a park. This actually happened to Michael Detlaff. He probably used all his luck in life that day. Of course, in a normal park, you can see trees, leaves, rocks, and so on. But in the Crater of Diamonds State Park, you can find a real diamond.

This park is very special because it’s where eight of the largest diamond deposits in the world are located. And anyone — literally anyone! — can just go there and search for diamonds. And it gets even better. The policy is “finders, keepers.” So yeah, just go find yourself a diamond there. You might even turn out luckier than Michael Detlaff. And he found the 5.16-carat diamond after less than a minute search!

Have you seen the largest orange diamond ever sold at auction? It was bought for 35 and a half million dollars in 2013. This is about $2.4 million per carat, which is the highest price per carat paid for a colored diamond at auction.

Miners have recently discovered the largest pink diamond found in more than 300 years. The diamond has the nickname “Lulo Rose,” which comes from the Lulo mine in northeastern Angola. The pink diamond weighs 170 carats. Right now, the largest pink diamond in the world is the 182-carat Daria-i-Noor from the Iranian collection of national jewels. But the newly discovered Lulo Rose is almost as large. Pink diamonds are relatively rare, too.

Science can’t fully explain what gives the gem that rosy hue. Hey maybe they’re shy, or embarrass easily. But the fact is that they are worth a lot of money. In 1999, miners in South Africa uncovered a rough 132-carat pink diamond, later called the Pink Star. In 2013, the Pink Star was sold for approximately $83 million at auction. This way, it became the most expensive gemstone ever sold.

In 2000, miners found a gigantic jade stone in Canada. 18 tons! They wanted to keep the stone, but then they got a generous offer. The buyers wanted to turn the huge piece of jade into a Buddha statue. Eventually, the stone was carved into a statue weighing 4 tons.

You might be sitting on a fortune hidden under your house or in the backyard. Every now and then, people discover strange and valuable things on their property. This is what happened to a lucky gem trader in Sri Lanka.

He had problems with the water supply, so he decided to have a well drilled in his backyard. Workers found a 2.5 million-carat sapphire cluster there. It weighed more than 1,000 pounds and was worth around $100 million on the market. Well that should fix his water supply.

We talked about rare black opals, and I can’t help but mention opal pineapple. It’s one of the rarest and most fascinating types of opal. It’s not a fossilized fruit or something like that. Only the shape of this cluster of crystals resembles that of the pineapple. These “Opal Pineapples” are only found on the White Cliffs in Australia.

If there’s a gold nugget, there should be silver nuggets, too, right? And they do exist! In fact, the largest silver nugget ever mined was found in the United States. It weighed 1,853 pounds. It was too large to be carried in one piece, so it was cut into 3 pieces and moved from the Smuggler Mine near Aspen Colorado in 1894.

Look at this sparkling purple gemstone. The Empress of Uruguay is the largest amethyst geode in the world. That’s a hollow rock with thousands of perfect crystals that formed inside. This geode is 130 million years old. It’s 11 feet high and weighs 2.5 tons!

Imagine extracting something that big from the soil! It took miners 3 months to take it out from the solid basalt which surrounded it. What would you do if you found something as precious as these treasures?