Famous Colombian emeralds

How we handle these stones

Weights change between sources, dates drift, and some stones live only in the memory of a town. For each one we give every figure we found, who gives it, and where the stone is said to be today.

Reading a carat

The Gachalá crystal weighs 858 carats.^[2] A carat is 0.2 grams, so that is about 172 grams.

That makes Fura, at about 11,000 carats, a crystal of 2.2 kilograms.^[5] Crystals of this size and color are rarely kept whole; most are cut into gems, which is part of why the survivors are famous.^[2]

Patricia (Chivor, 632 carats)

Patricia is a doubly terminated, six-sided crystal of 632 carats found at Chivor and kept at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.^[1]

GIA dates the find to January 1921; Spanish-language sources say 1920.^[7] The full story, with the ten dollars, is on its own page.

Gachalá (858 carats)

The Gachalá emerald is an 858-carat crystal found in 1967 in Gachalá, Cundinamarca.^[2]

It came from the Vega de San Juan mine and entered the Smithsonian collection in 1969.^[2]

Emilia (Gachalá, about 7,000 carats)

Emilia was found in 1969 at the Las Cruces mine in Gachalá. El Tiempo gave its weight as 7,025 carats^[3]; Spanish Wikipedia gives 7,015 carats and the date 15 July 1969.^[4]

Where it is now is disputed. The mine owner told El Tiempo it later appeared in a museum in Switzerland^[3]; Spanish Wikipedia says it is kept at the Museo del Oro of the Banco de la República.^[4]

Fura and Tena (Muzo, 1999)

Fura is an uncut crystal of about 11,000 carats found in 1999 in Muzo and named after the legend of Fura and Tena.^[5]

Tena, around 2,000 carats and about 400 grams, came out the same year. Its dark, even green makes it the more valued of the two.^[6]

El Monstro

Oral tradition: told locally, not confirmed by documents

In Gachalá people speak of El Monstro, a crystal said to weigh 16,020 carats. We have found no document, museum record or press report that confirms it. We keep it here, labeled, until one appears.