America’s Largest Gem Find
Pink Maine Tourmaline – 1972
Plumbago Mountain – Mine #3
Imagine it’s late October-early November in 1972. You and a bunch of guys are tunneling into the side of a mountain near the top with dynamite, picks and shovels and you are opening gem pockets filled with huge gem tourmaline crystals … mostly pink.
Your life has changed and is about to change even more dramatically because you have stumbled upon one of the world’s richest gem finds of the century. The leaves are gone from the trees, the air is cool, air temperature 37ºF, a slight wind out of the northwest.
Racing to secure as much of the gem treasure before the snow flies. Imagine by the time you remove your equipment from the mountain you will have secured two metric tons (3 1/2 million carats) of gems, a quantity so vast even a half-century later our cutters are still cutting gems from this find. As you can imagine, Maine jewelers were thrilled.
A Portland Jeweler Bought All the Prettiest Pink Tourmaline
This jeweler knew that in 150 years of tourmaline mining in Maine the color green predominated. Pure pink crystals of tourmaline were almost unheard of in Maine. So this jeweler bought evey pure pink cut gem in the earlyyears, more than he needed in any given year. Today a half-century later, Cross Jewelers still has a treasure chest of exceedingly rare pink Maine tourmaline gems. Will it last forever? Of course not, but this is your last chance to acquire one of these exceedingly rare Maine gems.
To Have a Treasure of Gems Discovered in Their Backyard…
One Portland jeweler bought everything that was pretty because pink in Maine had only occasionally been found and that there were no guarantees that pink tourmaline will ever be found again.
