“SEA ANEMONE” BROOCH set with spinel, mandarin garnet, imperial topaz and rhodolite garnets.

The cost of a high-quality spinel today will range anywhere from double to 10 times that of five years ago. A group of elite jewelers who are vying for the little-known gem have helped raise the asking price to anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000 a carat for an exceptional quality spinel. Varney predicts prices will continue to swell as more people acquaint themselves with the beauty and rarity of the gem, and the current U.S. sanctions against Myanmar’s military regime will only make the stone more rare and, therefore, more valuable. 

“Luxury is no longer about the size of a stone,” says Varney, who is known for his artistic use of gems. “My clients already have the ubiquitous diamonds, rubies and sapphires, and they come to me for something unusual that their friends don’t have.” As an alternative to a more predictable diamond version, Varney created a ring for one of his discriminating clients that had an extraordinary 14-carat red spinel at the center, framed with pavé orange spinel and white and yellow diamond accents.

Another of Varney’s one-of-a-kind treasures is an $80,000 ring with a mesmerizing 34-carat green tsavorite garnet, a stone rarely found in sizes larger than 10 carats. “It’s the definition of what a gemstone should be,” says the designer. “Tsavorite is interesting and rare.” The stone, which varies in spectrum from a pastel spring green to a rich forest green, has the translucent sparkle of an emerald but is tougher and less prone to crack. Tsavorites were first discovered in 1968 near Tsavo National Park in Kenya, where small quantities of this stone continue to be unearthed, as they are in Tanzania.

“Be daring and have a little fun,” advises Kimberly McDonald. “A comprehensive jewelry collection will offer diversity in scope and illustrate that the client has a sophisticated approach to her jewels.”

While the average luxury consumer is not likely to be familiar with a blue paraiba tourmaline or an alexandrite that shifts its color from green to red before one’s eyes, an elite coterie of designers and jewelry curators are ready to initiate them into the world of exotic and prized gems. These adventurous designers maintain that these lesser-known jewels offer good value, pointing to the fact that some of the mines that produce them are either depleted or provide a restricted supply of stones—a circumstance that makes such gems truly rarified treasures.

Out of Africa
One of greatest pioneers in both discovering and marketing exotic gems was George Frederick Kunz, who, as Tiffany’s chief gemologist from 1877 until his death in 1932, searched the world over for the finest specimens. He was responsible for first bringing obscure gemstones such as tanzanite and tsavorite from Africa into America. Many of these rare gems were bestowed upon the Museum of Natural History as part of its permanent mineral and gem collection, some through Kunz’s patron, J.P. Morgan.

Tiffany’s has kept the Kunz legacy alive and is working to cultivate a greater interest in collectible gems. Last year, the jeweler began inviting favored clients to intimate events that showcase the jeweler’s cache of loose exotic gemstones, along with a series of design concepts. “It’s a unique opportunity for our best clients to select a gemstone and work with the Tiffany’s design team to develop a unique creation that suits their style,” says Melvin Kirtley, group vice president. “It’s our job to expose our customers to the unique and rare.”

Kirtley is particularly keen on the ultra-rare paraiba tourmaline. “When a client sees the color, the effect is remarkable,” he notes, adding. “They fall in love.” Tiffany’s recently sold a 13.54-carat paraiba tourmaline and diamond pendant necklace for $425,000.

“Shoppers,” he says, “look for a stone that speaks to them.” They can gaze upon quite a majestic array of possibilities, from the intense orange spessartite garnet to the mysterious cat’s eye chrysoberyl—an olive green stone with a feline optical streak that seems to open and shut with the light. The little 3.7-carat alexandrite, priced at $70,000, transforms itself in different lighting, changing like a chameleon from shades of green to raspberry red. Discovered in 1830 in Russia’s Ural Mountains, the gem was named after Czar Alexander II upon his coming of age. While its original Russian source has long since been depleted, the gem is still being uncovered in small quantities in Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Brazil, though few new stones portray a striking color change.

“Be daring and have a little fun,” advises Kimberly McDonald, a New York-based jewelry curator and consultant who helps clients acquire their jewelry collections. “A comprehensive jewelry collection will offer diversity in scope and illustrate that the client has a sophisticated approach to her jewels.” McDonald herself favors the way designer Henry Dunay transforms large colorful gems such as a mandarin garnet into voluptuous pendants that serve as very personalized statements.

Indeed, it requires a collector possessed of blissful confidence and a strong dash of free spirit to feel comfortable dropping a half million dollars for a stone as elusive as a 9-carat electric blue paraiba tourmaline set in a ring. “[This] paraiba tourmaline is so beautiful that most people don’t know what to make of it when they see it,” says Andrea Hansen, director of marketing for H. Stern, the Brazilian-based jeweler with unrivaled access to its country’s rich gem supply. Most American clients, Hansen concedes, are not ready to spend that kind of money on an obscure gem, which is why H. Stern keeps the majority of its rare gem stash in its Brazilian stores. There, a mix of international travelers are more apt to spend the time and money to learn about unusual locally mined gems, then make significant purchases while visiting the region. Still, last year, an incomparable 7-carat alexandrite stone with a striking color change from green to red made its way to the New York boutique and sold for about $800,000. Hansen says it is possible that an alexandrite of that quality and size may never appear in the marketplace again.

A newly mined 14-carat deep pink, emerald-cut imperial topaz, being sold for $140,000, is the latest addition to H. Stern’s New York collection. “When a stone of that caliber comes to New York, we have about a dozen clients who are likely to be interested,” says Hansen. “Only a few appreciate the beauty and realize that there is just one Brazilian mine still producing imperial topaz, and it could dry up any day.”

Rock Solid Investment
Collectors willing to purchase little known stones, however, could reap the benefits of a wise investment in the future. Designer James Taffin de Givenchy, who attracts an international flock of clients to his by-appointment New York salon, recalls that while working in the jewelry department at Christie’s in the early 1990s, he met a pioneering collector from Montana who had purchased a red diamond 25 years earlier in Brazil simply because he believed it was an unusual collectible. He paid $6,000 for the diamond, which was slightly less than a carat, and he kept it as part of his personal gem collection. Ten years ago Givenchy brought it to a Christie’s auction, where it sold for a record-breaking $1 million.

“As a collector myself, I look for unique and captivating stones that most people have never heard about,” Givenchy says. Among his recently finished treasures are 7-carat demantoid garnet floral ear clips surrounded by pavé yellow diamonds, retailing for $160,000. First discovered in Russia’s Ural Mountains in 1868, the deep green demantoid garnet was coveted for its inherent sparkle, which gives it the appearance of a green diamond. While Russian mines have long since been exhausted, in the mid-1990s, a farmer in Namibia came upon a crystalline rock structure that struck his interest and was later identified as a new vein of the exotic garnet.

These stones are for people with a collector’s mentality who simply want the rarest gem specimens and are willing to pay the price,” notes Givenchy.

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.