Paraiba Tourmaline

One of the best parts of my job is dealing with gemstones. Checking them for quality can be a pain in the ass, but I've always gotten a little thrill at seeing them spread out all over my desk. I don't do as much stone checking as I used to, and quite frankly I'm glad about that. But our new Spring line is full of new colors and I can't wait to start seeing more of them.
My favorite new gemstone is called Paraiba, pa-ree-ba. It's a beautiful blue-green Tourmaline that I can't stop looking at, even though the ones we have are fake. The color is amazing.
My boss and I had an excited conversation about this stone today, and I learned a bit more about it.

Paraiba is the name of the state in Brazil where, in the late 1980's, this stone was first discovered, at a place called Mina da Bathalha, Mine of the Battle. It's a tiny little town, and the only place in the world where this stone can be found. There have indeed been many battles over the rights to this mine. Because of the small size of the crystals, the difficulty mining them, and the fact that they can only be found in one small area, real Paraiba Tourmaline can start at thousands of dollars and up to 20 grand per carat.

That's why we're using a heat treated, dyed topaz instead. They look almost exactly the same.