Why Benitoite Gemstones Are So Expensive | So Expensive | Business Insider

As a mineral and rock collector who fell down the Benitoite rabbit hole, its such a shame that they carve this rare mineral into gemstones. The mineral itself forms the most wonderful and distinctive blue triangles, and is actually the most common member of a very very rare crystal class (ditrigonal dipyramidal). There's even a joke amongst the mineral collector community of the "cult of the blue triangle" for people who fall in love with the stuff, since its very easy to get utterly obsessed with it. Not to mention that it also often comes along with two other very rare minerals, Neptunite and Joaquinite, and is on a matrix of wonderfully white Natrolite. Over all its just an absolutely fabulous mineral, there's nothing else even remotely like it. Oh and it has great short wave fluorescence too. I personally have a couple specimens, I would have more if it weren't so damn rare and expensive. Most samples are horribly overpriced on online dealers (as usual) and there are enough people obsessed that most collectors won't part with many of their specimens lol.

The Jewellery industry is built on artificial scarcity

As a Gemstone faceter that has worked with this material, I can confirm this is truly a stunning Gemstone, even more so in person!!

i feel like colorful gemstones like this is waaay more gorgeous than diamond👀

Wow, good to see they’re still at it. I mined there with John a couple years back as a fun outing. It is some tough, tough work. I hand washed about 90 of those trays of dirt in 3 hours and spent so much time in the dark room to find about a handful of tiny benitoite examples, none close to gem quality. That tiny fleck he found looks like a freaking boulder next to my finds.

Cost/value doesn’t mean that it’s being bought, that there is a demand for this gem, that it’s being bought at that price. Don’t be fooled. I’m a jeweler and a gia alumni member, I got hundreds of rubies sapphire emeralds and more exotic gems but at the end of the day the price is dependant on what the customer is willing to pay, clarity, color, demand, sourcing, provenance and sooooo many more factors. Like tanzanites these days aren’t selling as they use to and people are selling them for dirt cheap. Sapphires emeralds and rubies tbh aren’t that rare either, it depends on quality, example. I got rubies costing from less than a dollar to over 100k. If their isn’t a demand then it’s not worth shit 😅. Mabe u get 1-2 chance sales from some rich guy trying to flex. Here’s a tip, don’t buy into the hype. Buy into an educated guess.

It's nice to know that amongst the people trading those stones, some actually have an undertstanding of the geological implications of their product.

That area is literally a ghost town (New Idria). The town once supported one of the largest quicksilver (Mercury) mines. Today the area is a superfund site and is heavily polluted from Mercury pretty much everywhere. There is also natural deposits of asbestos which was mined there and further contaminated the area.

I'm not a fan of cut and faceted stones, I really love them in their unaltered form. If benitonite just looks like really pretty blue glass, then I'd wear pretty blue glass. Meanwhile, my fantastically formed benitonite with its blue triangles would be on my dresser in a case to be displayed.

Thank you for providing more awareness to benitoite! If you want to try to dig for your own piece of benitoite, feel free to check us out! We have public digs every week!

🎶Shine bright like a diamond Benitoite🎶 😳

It would have been nice if the film makers actually used some benitoite gems to show the true beauty, rather than some plain blue stones. But still a good story.

Like moissanite, but rarer and imo more striking because of the color along with the fire 🔥

My nephew is one of the guys sifting the rocks at the 5:27 mark. Neat to learn about different minerals.

Reminds me of tanzanite. Very beautiful color.

HOLY SHIT LAND OF THE LUSTROUS WAS SO POPULAR THEY STARTED MAKING GEMS IN REAL LIFE!!!

I love how in the intro the narrator says, "you can only really find this gem in one place" to then immediately follow up with the question and title of this series what makes it "so expensive". Lolol. Idk, maybe the fact it's only found in one place like you said. Haha. They always give away the reason for things being "So Expensive" within the first 20 seconds in almost every episode lol.

Can you create a video on Sri Lankan Blue Sapphire? That would be so interesting. It's a very beautiful and an extremely precious gemstone.

Fascinating stuff. Best of luck to the hard working folks relying on the next big find!

I've been to the benitoite mine. I was able to get a very small piece, but it is so rare.