One passed by thinking that it was just a stone, the other picked it up and got rich.

There are many examples in history when people became rich by picking up a seemingly ordinary stone, which later turned out to be precious.

But there are also those when people simply passed by diamonds or corundum, mistaking them for glass or ordinary rubbish.

this is what corundum looks like in nature this is what corundum looks like in nature

As an example, the situation in the Urals proceeding in the 80s. People unknowingly took the Ural gems for ordinary, albeit very beautiful stones. And only decades later, with the advent of open information on the Internet and printed publications, they came to the realization that the precious minerals, confused and sold to buyers for a pittance, had quite a significant value.

There are countless examples in history of how a truly precious stone was perceived by a person as an ordinary cobblestone or just rubbish. And only a person who understood minerals could distinguish his other similar «weeds».

Let’s take the image below as an example.

pearl pearl

I am sure that most of us would take this “cobblestone” for an ordinary beach pebble and pass by.

But in fact, we have one of the largest and most expensive pearls in the world, weighing just over 6 kilograms. The estimated cost of such a find varies within 3.5 million dollars.

Here is another example of a pebble, which was initially perceived as ordinary rubbish.

A pink diamond found by an American in 2020 was initially mistaken for ordinary trash. And only an examination by an experienced gemologist showed that we have one of the rarest precious minerals of 9.07 carats.

A diamond found by Steve McCool was also mistaken for an ordinary piece of glass from a broken amber bottle.

diamond found by Steve McCool. diamond found by Steve McCool.

Initially, the guy did not see anything valuable in this piece of mineral. However, he decided to check his find with the experts. The result of their test confirmed that the guy found a rare diamond of 4.5 carats.

There are many examples of such finds in history, and most of them, unfortunately, do not concern people living in Russia, a country with the largest reserves of precious and semi-precious minerals.

The reason why we do not find such gifts of nature lies in our ignorance. After all, few of us know how gems, diamonds or topazes look in nature.

What gemstones look like before being cut