While fancy colored diamonds are all the rage, most don’t know much about them. Take blue diamonds, for instance. While they continue to garner top dollar at high-end auctions around the world (they are extremely rare), most don’t know how they got that way. Are they actually treated diamonds (no, not true GIA certified blue diamonds) or did Mother Nature use her wily magic (yes!).
It just takes a small amount of boron and a low amount of nitrogen. Its these trace ingredients (basically impurities trapped in the crystal’s structure) that create the beautiful blue hue. Currently, blue diamonds are found in a only a few mines around the world. And as mentioned, they are very rare: only about one in 200,000 diamonds display blue with far fewer displaying deep color.
The Sky Blue Diamond, an 8.01-carat fancy vivid blue diamond mounted on a diamond ring designed by Cartier, sold for more than $17 million at Sotheby’s. Source: Forbes