A huge emerald weighing 11.5 kg (57,700 carats) was sold at auction in British Columbia. The price of the transaction, which took place on January 28, 2012, was $ 1.15 million. The buyer of the gem was Reagan Rainey, a buyer of precious metals.

The giant stone, resembling a watermelon in size, has its own name - Teodora. It was mined in a mine in Brazil. For polishing, the jewel was sent to Indian jewelers.
Gemologists, gemologists, do not consider Theodora to be a pure emerald. This nugget has significant flaws.

« There is color irregularity in the stone, - commented expert Jeff Nechka, - at least a quarter of the total mass is white beryl. It is advisable to talk not about the whole nugget, but about the layer precious mineral in 3-5 cm».

There were also difficulties with the assessment of the unusual stone. Theodora is so large that it is difficult to assess its transparency. Most likely, green color does not have the entire nugget, but only its upper layers. However, the surface of the emerald has a rich green color. There has not yet been an accurate assessment and it is not known whether this is a natural stone or it was grown artificially. Artificial gems, like quartz, are used to decorate expensive kitchen surfaces, just go to quartz to make sure of this.

There are emeralds that have already been officially recognized as champions. For example, the largest mined precious crystal of this stone weighed 28 kg before processing. He was found in a mine in Brazil.

Among the cut emeralds, the largest is considered to be a gem weighing 7.5 kg. It was also mined in Brazilian mines. In 1973, it was sold at a Gem Fair in Brazil. Lebanese oligarch Salim el Avar became its owner.

At the end of May, a giant emerald weighing 272 kilograms was found in Brazil. How much can such a stone cost? Sixteen years earlier, a 340-kilogram Bahia emerald found nearby was estimated at nearly a billion dollars. Fourteen people and one state fought for the right to own a giant gem, but no one got it.

Karnaiba

In early 2001, garimpeiro prospectors crawled out of a tiny mine on a farm in the state of Bahia, and then pulled out from the ground not just a precious stone, but a whole block weighing more than 340 kilograms. Such large gems have never been seen in those places.

Brazilian emeralds are not of high quality. Usually they are charged at ten dollars per carat, that is, hundreds or even thousands of times cheaper than stones that are mined in Colombia and Zambia. Selling large emeralds, oddly enough, is especially difficult. No one can say with certainty how much they cost. Ultimately, the price depends only on the amount of money the buyer has and the credibility of the seller, so emerald trade attracts crooks and scammers of all sorts like a magnet.

Someone offered the garimpeiro five thousand dollars, and they readily agreed: a bird in the hand is better than a pie in the sky. The stone was immediately resold for 20 thousand, then it changed the owner several times and eventually went to two businessmen from the city of São Paulo: the former bookseller Elson Ribeira and his partner Rui Saraiva. They hid the emerald in the garage and waited for the buyer.

Emerald Bahia

Silicon Valley

37-year-old American Anthony Thomas did not live in poverty. He had a small but successful construction business. During the dot-com boom, he invested more than $ 200,000 in a trendy California startup, Digital Reflection, which develops next-generation LCD displays. Every now and then the TV showed Silicon Valley investors making billions from similar deals. The businessman hoped that he would get a piece of this pie too.

Little did he know that 2001 was a bad time for such hopes. In a few months, the investment bubble will deflate and hundreds of startups will go bankrupt. When Digital Reflection founder Wayne Cutlett approached him in July and hinted that the company urgently needed additional investment, Thomas decided that the situation could still be salvaged.

He recalled a conversation with Ken Conetto, a consultant he worked with on his construction sites. Conetto liked to talk about the Brazilian emerald mines. Thomas and Cutlett contacted him and a plan was born. They decided to take advantage of Conetto's connections to buy emeralds at a bargain price, in fact, worth at least $ 25 million. On the security of stones, you can take a large loan and invest it in a highly profitable fund. This will help keep the startup afloat.

In September, the Americans flew to Sao Paulo. Conetto took Thomas to his Brazilian acquaintances - Ribeira and Saraiva. They showed him a 340 kg emerald. “60 thousand dollars - and it's yours,” said one of the Brazilians.

The American businessman could not believe his luck. He claims that after returning to America, he immediately transferred 60 thousand dollars to the Brazilians and waited. The emerald was supposed to have been sent by mail, but the package never arrived. A few months later, Thomas asked Conetto to fly to Sao Paulo and find out the reason for the delay. Brazil reported that the stone had been shipped but lost on the way to California.

New Orleans

From Conetto's point of view, events developed differently. During the trial, which began several years later, he assured that in reality there was neither the money that Thomas is talking about, nor the agreement to send him by mail. According to him, the gem remained in Brazil legally and was stored in a reliable bank for three years.

In 2004, Conetto, the Brazilians and Catlett, who joined them after the bankruptcy of Digital Reflection, registered Gemworks Mining in Panama. After that, the Bahia emerald still went to the United States. The package, with a declared value of $ 100, made it to San Jose without incident.

The partners tried to use the stone in all kinds of schemes of dubious legality. He wandered between a warehouse in San Jose, lawyer Cutlett's office, and a former federal bank vault in New Orleans, where he was caught by Katrina, the most devastating hurricane in United States history. The element broke through the dams that protected the city, the bank building flooded, and the giant emerald sank under water for several weeks.

Theodore's 11 kg emerald.

The 858-carat Gachalá is considered one of the most famous emeralds in the world.

A 2860-carat Colombian emerald bowl from the Habsburg Treasury in Vienna

Conetto soon met Larry Bigler. He claimed to be in real estate and came across as a wealthy and respectable man. The Bahia emerald immediately fascinated him, but not with its beauty (the stone is strikingly ugly), but with the opening perspectives. Bigler had no doubt that he would find a rich idiot who loved minerals more than dollars.

He convinced Conetto that he would be able to push the emerald, and promised him half the proceeds if he gave him a stone. Bigler then found a gem dealer in New York and offered him 10 percent if he sold the gem for more than $ 25 million.

The merchant started a page on the online auction eBay and put the emerald up for sale with a starting price of $ 19 million. The lot was accompanied by a flowery story about Brazilian prospectors who dragged a gem through the jungle for several months, repelling the attacks of panthers. Despite this, the auction attracted only one bid. Bigler ordered it to be canceled and looked for other options.

El Monte

In November 2007, Bigler asked a bankrupt businessman named Jerry Ferrara to take over the business. At one time he traded in real estate, but then he lost everything and was forced to spend the night in the car. “It was just incredible,” Ferrara later recalled. -Biegler came with daddy and gave me the property of the largest emerald in the world. He said he was looking for someone like me. "

Bigler instructed him to meet Keith Morrison, an unpleasant Mormon from Idaho who wants to buy diamonds for $ 1.3 million. Ferrara agreed on a deal and promised to give him the Bahia emerald if something happens to the promised stones.

As a result, Morrison really did not receive the diamonds and the giant emerald became his property. He teamed up with Ferrara and Bigler to find a buyer together. Potential buyers were taken to the vault in El Monte, California, where the stone was kept.

The partners claim that the Arab sheikhs and even the former chairman of the board of directors of the NASDAQ stock exchange Bernie Madoff asked the price for the Bahia emerald. He promised them $ 21 million in cash, $ 91 million in diamonds, and three wristwatches worth $ 15 million, if they are to be believed. Two days before the deal, he was arrested and charged with creating a pyramid scheme. Now he is in prison - serving a term of 150 years.

In June 2008, Bigler went missing. Soon, word came from him: he wrote that the Brazilian mafia had kidnapped him and begged for a ransom. Ferrara immediately suspected something was wrong. He began to understand and found out that Bigler was not at all a wealthy developer from California, as he claimed, but an ordinary plumber, and not particularly good: they complained on the Internet that he took money and did nothing.

An angry Ferrara was quite convinced that the Brazilian mafia was also a fiction. A scam to extort money from him. He told Morrison about this and they drove to El Monte. They managed to convince the manager to open the vault. The men pulled out the emerald, loaded it into a car and took it to Las Vegas.

A few hours later, Bigler showed up in El Monte. He did not find the stone, called the police and reported the robbery.

Emerald weighing 272 kilograms, found in Bahia on May 22, 2017

Las Vegas

The search for the emerald was assigned to detectives Scott Miller and Mark Gaiman of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. “It was a funny thing,” Miller recalls. - At first.

They tracked down Bigler's missing partners for several weeks and eventually found Morrison. He agreed to hand over the emerald to law enforcement on the condition that both he and Ferrara remain at large. The detectives did not mind, but they feared deception.

With a dozen cops armed with machine guns, Miller and Gaiman drove into Las Vegas in several cars. When they arrived, the local special forces were already waiting for them at the appointed place. A helicopter circled over the meeting place. Mormon did not lie. Morrison arrived in a tracksuit and handed over the giant emerald without resistance. As promised, he and Ferrara were not touched, and the gem was taken back to California and deposited in police storage as evidence.

It turned out to be difficult to figure out who the Bahia emerald really belongs to. The longer the detectives tried to unravel this case, the more they hated it. “This is some kind of puzzle from hell,” says Miller. Some actors there are almost two dozen in this story, and each one oppresses his own. As a result, the decision of the property issue was left to the court.

The litigation continued for almost ten years. Everyone was suing everyone - even that New York merchant who wrote fables about panthers and the jungle on eBay. While the proceedings were going on, Bigler disappeared again.

At one time, the scales tipped in favor of Anthony Thomas, who paid $ 60,000 for the emerald, but he could not find the receipt. According to him, all proof of payment burned down with the house in 2006. As a result, Thomas's claims were rejected.

In 2013, Thomas filed an appeal. During the re-examination of the case, which had been dragging on for several years, Ferrara and Morrison were able to convince the judge that they were right. On June 23, 2015, the Los Angeles Superior Court ruled that the Bahia emerald should become the property of FM Holdings, which they founded.

However, the story did not end there either. Brazil has declared its rights to the gem. The authorities of the country believe that the Bahia emerald was exported illegally and must return to its homeland. The US Department of Justice blocked the transfer of the gem to FM Holdings, but negotiations on the return of the stone dragged on.

Thomas filed for bankruptcy so as not to pay ruinous legal bills, Ferrara moonlights as a private detective, and Conetto shares a cluttered trailer with his 99-year-old mother and dreams of a big yacht and a castle in Dubrovnik. The 340-pound emerald that brought them together continues to gather dust in a police vault in Los Angeles.

The largest emerald in the world is the Bahia emerald, a nugget that weighs almost 400 kg (about 2 million carats) and is worth $ 400 million. They found a huge emerald in Brazil, the state of Bahia, after which it was named. For a long time he was kept in New Orleans, where he miraculously survived a flood. In the fall of 2008, breaking news announced that the world's largest emerald, Bahia, had been stolen from its vault. A little later, it appeared on the Ebay auction, where it was offered to buy it half the price of its original cost. The story ended with it being seized from a Los Angeles dealer and placed at the disposal of the city department.

The Bahia Emerald is by far the largest emerald in the world, but is it the most famous? There are also famous emeralds, which are famous for their weight, value and legends. Let's get to know each of them in more detail, and also find out what unusual jewelry there are that adorned rare emeralds.

Video on the topic: Emerald worth $ 400 million

The largest

Such gems, in general, prefer to keep unchanged. If only because the cut implies a certain deprivation of the original weight. So, acquiring beauty, a gem risks losing its uniqueness. What are they, these unique emeralds?

1. HIRE. The largest and most expensive emerald after Bahia. Its name is an abbreviation, which stands for North American Emerald Mine in English, that is, it was named after the deposit in which it was found. The gem weighs 1869 carats, in fact we HIRE - the most large stone emerald ever found in North America.
2. Emerald LKA. Another North American record holder. It weighs 1,686 carats, slightly "smaller" than HIRE. This beautiful gem is an elongated hexagon (its length is almost 20 cm) of a rich green color, with a special, characteristic rough surface.
3. Gachala. The gem called "Gachala emerald" weighs 858 carats. It is a familiar hexagon shape and has a deep rich green color. It was originally acquired by Harry Unston, who then donated it to the Smithsonian University of Washington. Now you can look at the impressive size of the gem in the gallery of gems of the university.
4. Patricia. A large, very beautiful, unprocessed emerald of 632 carats, which has valuable gem properties. This stone has a rare, twelve-sided shape, while crystals with six sides are more common. In addition, it is also double - in fact, these are two fused crystals, one smaller, and the other bigger size... Patricia was found in Colombia, in the Chivor deposit. Her name has two versions of the origin: either she was named after the daughter of Fritz Klein, the owner of the mine, or in honor of St. Patrick, the patron saint of the Irish. Fritz Klein, the owner, donated this gem to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

There was a scandal in the gemstone trade - the largest emerald in the world, a giant weighing more than ten kilos recently put up for auction in Canada, turned out to be not so much an emerald. Its owner was arrested for fraud.

(9 photos total)

1. At the end of January, a real emergency happened in the world of precious stones. A huge emerald of 57 thousand carats, weighing 11.5 kg, was mined in Brazil. The handsome giant was called "God's gift".

2. This is the largest cut emerald in the world in the history of these stones. It is about the size of a watermelon. True, the exact place where the treasure was found is still a secret. It is only known that the emerald was cut in India, and then he moved to Canada.

3. There it was bought by a Canadian named Regan Reenie for $ 1.15 million and put up for auction in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Photo: Regan Reenie, co-owner of the world's largest emerald, examines the stone.

4. Emerald "Teodora" (God's gift) weighing 11.5 kg (57,500 carats) was put up for auction in Canada last Saturday. Reenie was going to get at least $ 1.15 million for him.

5. Pictured: Auctioneer Mike Odenbach (right) begins bidding at Zvezda West Auction House in Kelowna, British Columbia on January 28. The starting price was 500 thousand dollars. But not one application was received for its purchase.

6. On the day of the auction, the owner of the giant emerald was arrested. It is reported that he has been repeatedly charged with fraud.

7. The emerald was removed from the auction due to the arrest of Reenie and the fact that he could not post a deposit for his participation in the auction as a seller.

8. The stone was studied by specialists. It was found that the emerald is most likely a dyed white beryl, which is of little value. Many of the gemologists hold the same opinion, having carefully studied the photographs of the fake emerald.

9. Moreover, its proposed value at the auction was relatively small. For example, the previous record holder, the Colombian Fura emerald of 11 thousand carats, was worth about 150 million dollars.

An emerald weighing 11.5 kilograms was put up for auction and valued at $ 1.15 million.

The green mineral, the size of a small watermelon and containing 57,700 carats, was auctioned off January 28, 2012 at Western Star Auctions, held weekly in British Columbia.

The stone, named Teodora, was mined in Brazil and cut in India. It was owned by gem buyer Reagan Reaney, who emphasizes that this is not a pure emerald.

“This is an emerald, but the exact amount of emerald it contains is impossible to determine,” says gemologist Jeff Nechka, who studied the gem.

Nechka said that he cannot say with complete certainty that this specimen is the largest emerald in the world.

“There is color irregularity in the stone, and therefore at least a quarter of its volume can be white beryl, the mineral that is the progenitor of emerald,” he says. - The surface of the stone is very well colored, but I doubt that the green color extends to the full depth. According to my estimates, in this case it is advisable to speak not about the whole stone as a jewel, but about its emerald layer, 3-5 cm thick ”.

Emerald is a transparent beryl colored green with chromium oxide or vanadium oxide.

Shane McClure, director of the Gemological Institute of America's West Coast Identification Service, is skeptical that this block is called an emerald.

“This is not an emerald, but beryl with an admixture of emerald! McClure says. - In order to completely paint such a stone green, it would take at least several tens of millions of years! I am convinced that the main constituent element of this so-called gem is beryl, the surface of which is slightly green. I believe that its initial cost is greatly overestimated and, according to my estimates, should be no more than 5 thousand dollars ”.

Despite the fact that the stone has a rich color, it is so large that it is simply impossible to measure its transparency, and therefore the standard assessment of the quality of emeralds is not applicable to it.

Experts have not been able to determine the depth to which the green color spreads in the stone, so at the moment it is not possible to establish the correspondence of price to quality.

Reagan Rainey is convinced that his giant ‘cobblestone’ is worth the stated money, even though it is not a piece of jewelry:

“We are not joking and do not cheat, but we say honestly that this is an emerald, in which, most likely, beryl is present. This is a gem, but not of gem quality, which is why we sell it at such a reasonable price! The main highlight of this emerald is not the quality, but the size, and I have no doubt that it will find its owner, ”Rainey said an hour before the start of the auction.

The stone was never sold and went to the Gemological Institute of America for research, where the exact amount of emerald contained in it will be established.