What is your favorite type of gemstone other than diamond. Personally I prefer the colored gemstones. That or the colored diamonds. My favorite type of colored gemstone is probably a tanzanite. I absolutely love the colors and they are truly a rare gemstone only being found in one place on earth. Tanzanites are mostly reddish brown and blue coming out of the ground, they are then heated to around 400-600c to remove the brown.

**copied from American Gem Society, The common story of tanzanite’s discovery tells of Maasai herders who found blue crystals in the Merelani Hills near Arusha, Tanzania, while tending livestock in 1967. They notified a prospector named Manuel d’Souza, who promptly registered claims with the government to begin mining.

Initially, d’Souza thought he was mining sapphire gems, but the crystal was soon identified as a vibrant blue variety of zoisite—a mineral stone that had been around since the early 1800s.

Tiffany & Co. recognized this blue gem’s potential to rival more expensive sapphire and agreed to become its main distributor. Instead of publicizing “blue zoisite”—which sounded a little too much like “suicide”—Tiffany named the gemstone “tanzanite” to highlight its exclusive geographic origin. They introduced it with a promotional campaign in 1968.

An estimated two million carats of tanzanite were mined before the Tanzanian government nationalized the mines in 1971. The government divided the mines into four sections, or blocks, in 1990. Tanzanite One Mining Ltd., the world’s largest tanzanite producer, holds the rights to Block C, which is larger than the other blocks combined.