World's Second-Largest Diamond Discovered in Botswana

A rough diamond of  1,111 carat has been recently discovered at the Karowe mine in Botswana, currently being operated by Lucara Diamond  Corp. That’s roughly the size of a tennis ball to give you a realistic guide.

To put that in perspective, the largest diamond ever found was the Cullinan at a mine in South Africa. Weighing in at 3,106ct this gem was then cut up into 9 major parts. The largest of this being mounted in  the Sceptre of the Cross in the British crown jewels.

While this newly discovered may be quite substantially smaller, this is still an incredible find, making this the largest diamond found in over a century.

Lucara Diamond Corp have announced that this diamond is a Type IIa diamond. While the stone will still be heavily examined and analyzed before any bidding  will take place,  this can already tell us quite a lot about the stone. Being Type IIa it is a  much  more pure diamond, containing very little to no nitrogen, it will almost certainly yield a top colour, most likely D/Colourless.

The location of inclusions will be random through the stone, with any luck they will be small in number and easily removable during  the cutting process. A series of computers will map the rough diamond and the best possible cutting route will be determined this way.

A stone like this can easily take well over a year to analyze and polish, so it might be a wait until the heart of this incredible diamond is brought to our eyes.