Famous brown diamonds

• Golden Jubilee Diamond is currently the largest cut diamond in the world. it was found in 1985 as a rough stone of 755.5 carats (151 g) in the Premier mine, South Africa - one of the most famous diamond mines in the world operated by De Beers. The stone was cut into a 545.67 carats (109.13 g) gem and has been purchased from De Beers by a group led by Henry Ho of Thailand in 1995. The Golden Jubilee Diamond was named by King Bhumibol Adulyadej and given to him on occasion of his 50th coronation anniversary.

• Earth Star Diamond was found at another South African mine of De Beers, the Jagersfontein Mine on May 16, 1967. The diamond came from the 2,500-foot (760 m) level of the volcanic diamond-bearing pipe. The rough gem weighed 248.9 carats (49.8 g) and was cut into a 111.59 carats (22.32 g) pear-shaped gem with a strong brown color and extraordinary brilliance. The diamond was bought in 1983 for $900,000.

• Star of the South (original name was Portuguese "Estrela do Sud") is one of the largest diamonds found in Brazil and the first Brazilian diamond to receive international acclaim.^[10] The original rough stone was found in 1853 by an African slave woman, for which she received her freedom and life pension. The diamond was cut into a cushion shaped gem weighing 128.48 carats (25.70 g). For long time, the Star of the South was considered as "by far the largest diamond discovered by any woman anywhere", until the Incomparable Diamond was discovered in the 1980s.

• Incomparable Diamond is another African diamond, one of the largest ever found in the world (890 carats or 178 g). A young girl encountered it in 1984 a pile of rubble collected from old mine dumps of the nearby MIBA Diamond Mine, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The rubble was sorted out during the recovery process because it was considered too bulky to contain diamonds. This massive diamond was considered to be cut into the world largest gem, but finally, the size was reduced to 407.5 carats for the sake of having less internal flaws; nevertheless, it was the 3rd largest cut diamond after the Cullinan I and Golden Jubilee Diamonds. Before cutting, the stone was the largest brown diamond and the fourth largest diamond of any color ever discovered after the Cullinan (3106.75 carats), Excelsior Diamond (995 carats) and Star of Sierra Leone (968.9 carats).The stone was cut by a team led by Marvin Samuels, who co-owned the stone along with Donald Zale of Zales Jewellers and Louis Glick. In November 1984 the finished stones were put on display: a single golden diamond of 407.48 carats (81.50 g) in a 'triolette' shape, and fourteen additional gems. Notably, the satellite stones cut from the Incomparable varied greatly in color, from near-colorless to rich yellow-brown. The largest of these stones still bears the name 'Incomparable Diamond', and was graded by the GIA as internally flawless in 1988.

• Lesotho Brown was unearthed at the Letseng diamond mine in Lesotho in 1967 at Letseng-la-Terai by Ernestine Ramaboa. The rough stone weighed 601 carats (120 g) and was cut in 1968 into 18 polished diamonds totaling 252.40 carats (50.48 g). The largest was a 71.73 carats (14.35 g) emerald cut known as the Lesotho I. The Lesotho III (the third largest stone cut from the crystal) is a 40.42 carats (8.08 g) marquise-shaped gem that was once owned by Jackie Kennedy, given to her by her husband Aristotle Onassis. The ring had an estimated value of $600,000 US, but at the Jackie Kennedy estate sale auction in April 1996 it reached a price of $2,587,500 US dollars. It was mounted in a platinum ring created by Harry Winston. The Lesotho I was offered at Sotheby's, Geneva on November 19, 2008 as part of a Magnificent Jewels sale, but it did not sell. It'd had a presale estimate of 3,360,000 to 5,600,000 Swiss francs, which equated to $2,783,894 to $4,639,824 US dollars. The lot's description mentioned it was being offered for sale by the same owner who had originally bought it from Harry Winston around 1969. It also listed the gem as having a clarity of VVS2, excellent polish and excellent symmetry, and although the stone (and the other Lesotho fragments) is a pale brown color, no color grade is mentioned in the auction text. This might have been deliberate on Sothebys part, so as not to detract potential buyers, since pale brown diamonds traditionally aren't as valuable as colorless and near-colorless diamonds.