I have been roaming around youtube and found the multiple lists of either the rarest or most valuable or most beautiful gemstones in the world to be rediculous. They do not compare apples with oranges, while many of them include Tazanite which is neither rare nor exceptionally beautiful nor excessively expensive. To ice the cake they do NOT include Paraiba at all. With basically no Paraiba being found anymore the ratio of tourmaline mined to diamond must be extrodinary. The lists love to compare a gemstone’s rarity with diamond, dispite the the fact that diamonds are not really rare.
The world has to face the fact that Paraiba has arrived and should be considered one of the top gemstone along with diamond, ruby, sapphire and emerald. The day when tourmaline had no star to lead its beauty to public acceptance is past. The “right” people have built the wave that will carry Paraiba forward even with very little material coming on to the market.
Fortunately I was able to get many unheated cuprian tourmaline when the getting was good. Some like #941 ad #942ncould be called paraiba, paraiba type while purple blues #443, 444, and 445 should be called cuprain tourmaline in my opinion. The last three could be heated to be paraiba. With a little searching you can find many tourmaline that I have found to be cuprian with my spectrometer. They come in many colrs out side the range of paraiba colors.
Bruce
