In a video that’s currently tearing up the internet, Culinary Institute of America student Alex O’Brien Yeatts redefines the term “rock candy” as he takes a hammer and cleaver to a giant chocolate geode. After five powerful hits, the boulder-like object cracks in half to reveal a gorgeous formation of sugar crystals that could easily be mistaken for amethysts. Yeatts worked …

Welcome to Music Friday when we often bring you golden oldies with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, we climb into our Wayback Machine and transport ourselves 60 years into the past, where a 17-year-old Ray Stevens has just signed a deal with Capitol Records’ subsidiary, Prep Records. For his first single, the teenager releases …

Brawny, brazen thieves broke into Berlin’s Bode Museum just after 3 a.m. on Monday and bolted with the “Big Maple Leaf,” a Canadian-minted coin weighing 220 pounds and worth $4.4 million. Measuring 20.8 inches in diameter, the coin was unveiled in 2007 as the world’s largest. While the original remained in a high-security vault in Ottawa, five others were minted and …

In what has been labeled as a “true game-changer” for the colored-gemstone market, a Switzerland-based laboratory is using DNA-based nanoparticles to mark emeralds with an invisible imprint that will provide proof of their origin anywhere along the supply chain. The particles, which are smaller than 100 nanometers in size, will be applied to rough emerald crystals at mining sites. The particles are …

With the assistance of New York City sanitation workers, a desperate couple waded through 800 disgusting trash bags to find two “priceless” platinum rings that had been accidentally thrown away. “I felt really helpless,” NYC apartment dweller Shannon Lombardo told WABC-TV. “It wasn’t so much about the [value] of the rings. It was what they represented.” How the custom, vintage-style rings …

On Thursday, Australia Post will release a dazzling collection of colorful stamps illustrated with native gemstones — the golden sapphire, pink diamond, rhodonite and fluorite. The stamp issue is titled “The Rare Beauties: Extraordinary Gemstones.” What all four gems have in common is that they are housed in the mineral collection of the Australian Museum in Sydney. “Australian gemstones are admired and …

Welcome to Music Friday when we often bring you throwback songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today we zoom back to the summer of 1965 — a time of hippies, bell bottoms, flower power and a chart-topping duo named Sonny & Cher singing “I Got You Babe.” In this love song about a young …

Using only his bare hands and a sieve, pastor and part-time miner Emmanuel Momoh pulled a 706-carat diamond from the sediment of a river bed in Sierra Leone. About the size of a hockey puck, the diamond is the second-largest ever found in this western African nation and ranks as one of the top-10 largest rough diamonds ever recorded. Momoh …

The Merlin Diamond Mine in Australia’s Northern Territory has yielded not one — but five — ultra-rare green diamonds, the largest of which weighs 1.42 carats. The discoveries are noteworthy because barely a handful of green diamonds are introduced to the market each year and the finest-quality ones can fetch upwards of $3 million per carat. Mining company Merlin Diamonds …

All eyes will be on the stunning 59.60-carat “Pink Star” diamond when it returns to the big stage at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on April 4. If all goes as planned, the largest internally flawless, fancy vivid pink diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) will regain its title as the world’s most valuable gem. The hammer price …