Celebrity diamonds

Elizabeth Taylor once famously said “big girls need big diamonds” and she wasn’t kidding.

Elizabeth was married eight times – twice to Richard Burton who gave her the Taylor-burton – a whopping 69.42 carat pear shaped diamond worth an estimated $8.8million USD.

The original rough was found in 1966 in the Premier Mine in South Africa and was weighted at 240.80 carats.

After Burton’s death in 1979, Liz Taylor sold the stone and reportedly received $2.8million which she donated in his memory to a hospital in Biafra.

The Hope Diamond, also known as Le Bleu de France, is one of the world’s most legendary and recognisable gems.

Deep blue in colour, it weighs in at a whopping 45.52 carats.

Formed approximately 1.1 billion years ago, the Hope Diamond is notorious for its supposed curse.

The diamond was purportedly stolen from the eye of a sculpted statue of the goddess Sita in India and has been bringing misfortune to those who have owned or worn it since.

Add to this a varied history – which includes being owned by King Louis XIV, stolen during the French Revolution, sold to raise money for charity and then finally donated to the Smithsonian Institution - the Hope Diamond is truly unique.

The Cullinan Diamond, at 3,106.75 carats (about 635grams and over 10cm in length), is the largest rough gem-quality diamond ever discovered.

The Cullinan was found by miner Thomas Evan Powell in 1905 in a South African mine owned by Sir Thomas Cullinan.

The massive diamond was bought by the South African government and presented to the British King Edward VII on his birthday two years later.

The Cullinan has since been cut into nine smaller stones, with the biggest of them known as the Great Star of Africa.

A second part of the Cullinan was fashioned into the cushion shaped diamond in the centre-front of the Imperial State Crown of Great Britain.

For her third marriage to rapper Kanye West, Kim Kardashian accepted a more than 15 carat diamond ring.

The ring is rumoured to be worth anywhere from $1.25 million USD to as much as $8 million USD.