The World’s Rarest Yellow Diamond Arrives in London

British model Jerry Hall was on hand to help debut one of the world’s rarest diamonds at the London Natural History Museum; the Sun Drop diamond.

Weighing 110 carats total, this pear shaped, bright yellow diamond will go on display to the public tomorrow for a limited amount of time, and is on loan from Cora International, a diamond manufacturer.

“I’ve never seen a stone such as this,” Alan Hart, the Natural History Museum’s minerals curator, told BBC News.  “A one carat diamond is what most people are familiar with, and are really pleased to own. You can see how exceptional this diamond is.”

The color of a diamond is the result of the presence of other substances or structural differences, such as with pink diamonds,  whose color is created by structural defects.  Blue diamonds, on the other hand, are created by small amounts of boron, and exposure to radiation at some point during formation will result in a green tint.

Yellow diamonds, like the Sun Drop, though are created by traces of nitrogen in the carbon, rendering strong colors unusual, and large stones with high levels of color are extremely rare.  

According to Hart, diamonds with a strong hue represent only a small amount of all natural diamonds in the world, and the brightness and large size of the Sun Drop diamond make it the world’s largest yellow diamond.

“In addition, extremely large diamonds with exceptional colors are historically significant as so few exist, so we are delighted to be able to show the Cora Sun-Drop to our visitors,” Hart said.

The Sun Drop will be on display in ‘The Vault” at the museum, which already include the Devonshire Emerald, the Aurora Pyramid of Hope – a world-class collection of 296 naturally colored diamonds – Heron-Allen’s cursed amethyst and the Nakhla, an extremely rare Martian meteorite.

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