552 Carat Yellow Gem, Biggest Diamond Unearthed in Canada

The biggest ever diamond in North America has been unearthed at a mine in frozen Northern Canada by Dominion Diamond Mines and Rio Tinto Group. The 552-carat yellow diamond is found at the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories, the size of which is almost three times the size of the largest stone ever found in Canada.

Diavik and its neighboring Ekati mine produces some very high quality diamonds, but is not famous for huge gems, which are normally found in southern African mines. Chief Executive Officer of Dominion Diamond Mines, Shane Durgin said the diamond is of gem quality, which means it is suitable for jewelry. Yellow stones typically sell at a discount to Type II, a top whites often found in the best African mines.

Durgin also said, “We can label it fancy yellow, but beyond that, due to its rough nature and the abrasions received through the processing facility, that’s all we can comment on. It’s very hard to give a ballpark estimate. It all depends on, again, the cutting and the resulting stone it ends up”.

According to Bloomberg Calculations, the discovery is the seventh biggest in this century and would be among the 30 largest stones ever unearthed. The biggest stone ever found was the 3,106-carat Cullinan, which was found near Pretoria in South Africa in 1905. It was later cut into several polished gems, the two largest of which, the Great Star of Africa and the Lesser Star of Africa, are now set in the Crown Jewels of Britain.

There have been a series of big finds in the recent years because better technology has helped miners first detect and then not to break big stones that are susceptible to being smashed in the mining process. Among those are diamonds found by Lucara Diamond Corporation and Gem Diamonds Ltd. that fetched between $40 million and $63 million.

The Diavik mine, 60% of which is owned and fully operated by Rio, Dominion bought the stone in an internal auction process from its partner. Dominion said it would select someone soon to cut and polish the stone.

Durgin said, “It’s a beautiful gem-quality diamond”, adding that it was a “miracle” that the stone survived the mining process without a single break. “It’s very unusual for a diamond of this size in this part of the world. So it’s a very unique discovery”.

In the year 2015, Rio unearthed a 187.7-carat diamond from Diavik mine. The diamond later named as ‘Foxfire’ also had a narrow escape while unearthing. The diamond was exhibited at the Smithsonian before it was polished into a pair of pale yellow earrings weighing 77.7 carats. The earrings were sold for over $1.5 million at Christie’s earlier this month.