TANZANITE – THE RAREST GEMSTONE FOUND EVER
It was discovered in the 1960s and named in honor of Tanzania, the location of its discovery by Tiffany & Co. The famous firm declared it to be “the most beautiful blue stone discovered in the last 2,000 years”.
Tanzanite is so rare because it is found and mined in a small area just four kilometers wide and two kilometers long at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, in the Manyara region of Northern Tanzania.
According to gemologists, the circumstances that led to the gems formation 585 million years ago were so exceptionally unusual, that the likelihood of finding tanzanite anywhere else on earth is one in a million, making it a thousand times rarer than diamonds.
At the current rate of mining, the geologist also estimates that the available supply will be depleted at the largest mine – Tanzanite One Mining Ltd – within the next 25-30 years. As a result, tanzanite is known as the “gemstone of a generation” because this generation will be the last one able to be a tanzanite’s first time owner, before the supply is exhausted.