Yemengzhu – The rock of 3 billion dollars
What weighs 6.2 tons and is worth more than 3.1 billion dollars? Are you guessing a new high-tech battleship or maybe a new stealth fighter? Well, it’s a big fluorite ball that glows in the dark.
Yemengzhus, also known as legendary luminous pearls in China, are balls of rare glow in the dark fluorite.
It is very rare in the mineral kingdom for a Fluorite specimen to glow in the dark without the aid of an ultraviolet light. So rare, in fact, that Western geology textbooks still do not recognize this species of fluorite.
This new deposit was first reported in the Chinese press in November 1982. Workers from the Guangdong Province Geological, Metallurgical and Geological Exploration Company found a deposit of Yemengzhu fluorspar in a tungsten mine in Guangdong, China. . The company ground the deposit into a round sphere (Pearl) and had the Chinese government put an appraisal value on it. In 1983 the Chinese government released an appraisal valuing this Yemengzhu at $900 million.
What I found interesting about this evaluation report is that the government clearly states its reasons and methods for arriving at the price of $900,000,000. They compared the pearl with the best grade of diamonds. This evaluation can be found on the Internet.
Since the first Yemengzhu came to light in 1982, several more pearls have been made, each larger than the last and with an even higher price tag. Here are two well-documented cases.
On January 15, 2002, the world’s largest Yemengzhu was exhibited in Shenzhen, its weight was 14.35 kilograms and its diameter was 21 cm. This pearl was valued at 1.2 billion US dollars.
October 2007: A new world record holder goes on display in Shanghai. Certified by the headquarters of The World Guinness. The Yemengzhu weighs 6.1 tons and is valued at US$3.1 billion for a rock???
I have found documentation of other smaller pearls coming on the market since 1982. They range from the size of an egg to the size of a basketball. Prices are on the entire scale from $64,000 up to $108,000,000.
What makes a six tone rock worth more than a little country? There’s actually a lot of debate about that in China right now. National pride and traditions are driving the markets. Every child in China knows the story of The Legendary Luminous Pearl. Touching a pearl is believed to bring you great prosperity and good luck. The belief has spawned an entire multi-billion dollar industry that makes and sells man-made Yemengzhus for the home.
There is documentation on the web that counts all the millions that have been won and lost in Yemengzhus. My favorite is one about a Chinese supermarket owner who borrowed $70 million from his shareholders to buy a Yemengzhu to display in his chain of stores. When the company went bankrupt they sold the pearl for only $5 million because the market is now cooling off. The press can’t find the owner anywhere.
I hope you find this story as fascinating as I do, I’m still searching the internet for more documentation and I hope to write a book on why a stone ball is worth $3.2 billion.