Another more recent finding was a cove of paraiba tourmaline uncovered in 1987 through sheer determination by a man named Heitor Dimas Barbosa. He had a premonition that a treasure of gems existed in a particular mountain in the Brazilian state of Paraiba. After six years of digging, he finally discovered the unexpected tourmaline, which owes its vivid turquoise blue color to copper found in the stone. The mountain has been nearly leveled and depleted of its cache of gems, making the paraiba one of the most desirable and expensive stones on the market today.

To the surprise of many veteran gemologists, a group of miners uncovered a completely new gemstone in November 2002 in a particularly remote area of Madagascar. Christened pezzottaite as a tribute to Dr. Federico Pezzotta, in recognition of his contributions to Madagascar’s mineralogy, the bright pink stone’s meager supply was depleted in just 18 months. Last year Brendan Laurs, a Gemological Institute of America gemologist and a geologist specializing in gem formation, explored the excavation site where the pezzottaite was unearthed. “It’s almost unheard of to find undiscovered crystals of this color, transparency and size,” he says. He estimates only 150 kilograms of rough stone were uncovered, and no more than 25 percent of that supply was suitable to be cut into gemstones. It disappeared immediately into the hands of a few dealers, mostly in Europe. Anyone on a quest for this gem, a member of the beryl family, may spend years hunting.

While pezzottaite’s rarity and the rapid exhaustion of its supply are fairly unique, it illustrates how quickly a buyer must react when encountering a rare gemstone. Hesitate for even a single day, and the treasure may vanish.