Fine jewelry is nearly always passed down among family members who treasure their pieces’ history and value. Inherited pieces of jewelry like this often come with stories tied to them: happy tales of anniversaries, birthdays, career milestones. However, for certain famous pieces, their stories are less than cheerful. From the collections of royals and thieves come these three famous pieces that are renowned for the horrible curses that are supposedly tied to them.

The Hope Diamond

The Hope Diamond is arguably the most famous cursed piece of jewelry in the world. Its origins can be traced back to the 17th century, when it was mined in Golcanda, India at 112.19 carats. It was first purchased by French traveller and gem merchant Jean Baptiste Tavernier, who then sold the stone to King Louis XIV of France in 1668.

Louis XIV had it re-cut and -set, but could not enjoy it for long. Four years after he received it, in 1792, he and his wife Marie Antoinette were caught while they were trying to flee France and were beheaded.

That same year, the stone was stolen during a looting of the French National Treasury. The line of provenance gets murky here, but the diamond finds itself in the hands of King George IV of England, whose estate sold it after his death to settle his incredible debts in 1830. Its next owner is John Frankel from New York City, whose sons kept the stone until it was sold yet again to settle terrible debts.

In 1909, Pierre Cartier sold the Hope Diamond to Evalyn Walsh Mclean, an heiress and socialite  who’d known of the diamond’s cursed history but chose to ignore it, as she said “unlucky objects were lucky for her.”  In the years after her acquisition of the stone, her son died in a car accident, her daughter of an overdose of sleeping pills, and her husband in a sanitarium for brain atrophy due to alcoholism (but not before cheating on her first). Her family also had to sell their bankrupt newspaper, the Washington Post, before she died of pneumonia in 1947.

The stone was acquired by Harry Winston, who donated it to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. in 1958, and it has been on display there in its final 45-carat form ever since.

The Delhi Purple Sapphire

This stone’s haunted quality is quite cast in doubt, but it certainly does have an interesting story, whether the hauntings are true or not.

The Delhi Purple Sapphire is, firstly, not actually a sapphire, but an amethyst. The stone was reportedly taken by a British soldier from the Temple of Indra in Kanpur, India in 1857. It found itself in the hands of Colonel W. Ferris, whose family began suffering from financial and health problems. “From the day he possessed it, he was unfortunate,” wrote Edward Heron-Allen.

Heron-Allen was a scientist, writer, and Persian scholar who came to own the Delhi Purple Sapphire himself in 1890 and faced a bout of bad luck himself, which he tried to reverse by setting the stone into a ring and “neutralizing” it with other blessed stones in 1902.

He later pawned the stone off on his friends, who, according to London’s Natural History Museum, were afflicted by a “trail of suicides, apparitions, disasters, and failed careers.” Eventually, Heron-Allen took the stone back, packed it inside seven boxes, and gave it to his bankers, who were instructed not to open it until 33 years after his death. With the stone, he packaged a letter detailing this terrible history of bad luck and bloodshed, instructing whoever owned it next to “cast it into the sea.”

His daughter was not nearly so superstitious and donated the stone to the London Natural History Museum less than a year after Heron-Allen’s death, and the museum’s researchers have deemed the letter a sham. Nevertheless, the stone comes with a fascinating history, and even if its stories were true, it is being displayed safely behind glass at the museum.

The Black Prince’s Ruby

Like the Delhi Purple Sapphire, which was not actually a sapphire, the Black Prince’s Ruby is not actually a ruby, but in fact a large red spinel, which is much less valuable. Because of this, the stone was labelled “The Great Impostor.”

The stone was reportedly mined from what is modern-day Tajikistan and taken to Spain, where in the 14th century it was taken by force from Granada by the King of Castile, Pedro the Cruel. Shortly after he acquired it, his half-brother attacked him and challenged his hold on the crown.

Sources differ on what happened next: some say Edward of Woodstock, the “Black Prince,” acquired it because of his success after the Hundred Year’s War in Europe. Others say Pedro the Cruel appealed to the Black Prince for assistance in holding off his brother’s advances on the crown and they were victorious, so the Black Prince was given the stone in thanks. Either way, the stone stayed in the Black Prince’s collection until his death of a mysterious disease nine years later.

The “ruby” reportedly lay witness to various battles and to the mysterious, disease-fueled deaths of its owners. King Henry V of England supposedly wore it during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, in which he nearly died. The stone stayed in the British Tudor family of royals until Charles I was beheaded for treason in 1649 and the stone was sold. It was bought back by Charles II, who nearly lost it when the crown jewels were stolen, but it was eventually set into the Imperial State Crown of England.

Apparently, some say that the curse continues, as the jewelers who re-set the stone suffered a fire in 1841, and the Tower of London, where the jewels are kept, was bombed in World War II, but for now, the Black Prince’s Ruby seems to be at rest.

Widely considered to be the most famous diamond in the world, the Hope Diamond seems to have brought forth many things, but hope wasn’t one of them. The 45.52 carat steel blue diamond has intrigued the world since its discovery centuries ago. Legend has it the diamond came from the eye of a sacred idol known as Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, found in the coleroon River in India. According to the legend, it was taken from the statue by a French adventurer-jewel trader around 1662, Jean Baptiste Tavernier, and renamed The Tavernier Blue.
This was the start of the fabled curse, which foretold bad luck and death, not only for the owner, but for all who touched it.

Tavernier purchased the stone and smuggled it to Paris, where he later sold it to King Louis XIV. The king’s master cutter and court jeweler, Sieur Pitau, recut the Tavernier Blue to enhance its beauty with 63 new facets that equaled 69 carats. The cutting took two years. It was recorded in the royal inventory and renamed the French Blue. Louis XIV had it set in gold and wore it simply from a ribbon hanging from his neck or in a brooch.

When King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were imprisoned after the outbreak of the French Revolution, the crown jewels were put in a warehouse, publicly exhibited, and then, in September 1792, stolen over the course of five days. On January 21, 1793, Louis XVI was guillotined. Nine months later, on October 16th, his wife Marie Antoinette was also guillotined, and these beheadings are commonly cited as one of the most prominent results of the diamond’s “curse.”

The French Blue disappeared for a while, only to turn up 20 years later in London in 1812, and renamed the Hope Diamond after the Hope family who owned it for most of the 19th century. It stayed in the Hope family until descendant Lord Francis Hope sold it in 1901 to pay off the debts of his lavish lifestyle. Francis bet badly on horses and business enterprises. He lost his fortune and his wife, and, after a series of court cases, was allowed to sell the Hope Diamond to Joseph Frankel’s Sons & Company. Frankel’s and Francis Hope both died in poverty, and some believe that this was because of the Hope Diamond curse.

The Hope Diamond was finally sold, at a bargain price, to other diamond dealers, coming to the Cartier brothers in Paris.

In 1911, the diamond was purchased by Evalyn Walsh McLean, a young Washington socialite heiress who bought the Hope Diamond from Cartier for $185,000. Cartier may have embellished the ‘cursed by a Hindu god’ story in order to sell the diamond to the immensely wealthy Evalyn. Sadly, McLean’s later life provided fodder for more rumors surrounding the cursed diamond. During that time, her young son died in a car accident, her daughter committed suicide, and her husband was confined in an insane asylum.

Now, is the diamond curse a karma inspired event for sacrilegious theft or are the unfortunate events that befell its owners merely a string of coincidences? Was Pierre Cartier embellishing the story of the curse to pique Evalyn Walsh McLean’s interest in buying the diamond?

Mrs. McLean’s jewelry collection, which included the Hope Diamond, was purchased by Harry Winston Inc. of New York. The Hope Diamond was shown at many exhibitions and charitable events, before being donated to the Smithsonian, and moved onto a rotating pedestal inside a cylinder made of bulletproof glass, casting its spell over seven million visitors a year.

Take a look at five of history’s most expensive jewelry gifts, each with a whopping price tag that will make your head spin. Oh darling, you really shouldn’t have…

A $7 Million 68-Carat Diamond

Actor Richard Burton purchased alot of jewels for his wife Elizabeth Taylor but perhaps his most stunning gift was a 68 carat diamond. Burton was outbid when the stone first went to auction in 1969. He lost to Robert Kenmore, the chairman of Cartier’s parent company the Kenmore Corporation.

Inconsolably distraught, the frantic Burton was desperate to own the diamond and immediately set about purchasing the stone from Kenmore. (For her part, by Burton’s own account, Taylor was indifferent to owning it and insisted she would “make do” with her vast collection of diamonds.) Ultimately Burton bought the impressive diamond for a cool $1.1 million ($7 million in today’s dollars) and gave it to Taylor who wore it as a necklace to the 1970s Academy Awards.

The $7.6 Million Hope Diamond

Socialite Evalyn Walsh received the Hope Diamond as a wedding present from her husband Edward Beale McClean in 1912. McClean paid $300,000 (approximately $7.6 million in today’s dollars) for the 45.52 carat gray-blue stone… which Walsh would often hang from her pet dog’s collar to amuse party guests.

However, the stone was (and for some believers still is) rumored to be cursed with its past owners having committed suicide, been violently murdered or died in abject poverty. Despite her own string of personal tragedies including the accidental death of her son and the bankruptcy of her family’s newspaper The Washington Post, Walsh herself did not believe the Hope Diamond was cursed.

Today the illustrious diamond sits in the Smithsonian Museum and is valued at upwards of $250 million.

A $12.7 Million Emerald Tiara

In 1900, German prince Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck commissioned a diamond and emerald tiara for his second wife Princess Katharina.

Above its diamond base, the tiara features 11 Colombian emeralds, nine of which are capped with rose diamonds mounted in silver and gold. The emeralds are marked for their exceptional color and impressive size. They are also intriguing because their whereabouts before they came into Princess Katharina’s possession are largely unknown. The stones are believed to have been, at one point, likely in the 17th or 18th century, owned by an Indian Maharaja and may have been a part of Empress Eugenie of France’s private collection.  

In 2011, the tiara sold for $12.7 million at Sotheby’s auction in Geneva.

A $20 Million Cartier Pearl Necklace

In 1905, millionaire railroad tycoon Morton F. Plant owned an exquisite six-story marble and granite building, done up in a neo-Italian Renaissance architectural style. And to only add to its prestige, it sat kitty corner from the Vanderbilt estate at the posh corner of Fifth Avenue and East 52nd Street.

When widower Plant remarried in 1914, the new couple was eager to move out of the now “commercialized” neighborhood. While awaiting the construction to be completed on their new uptown apartment, Plant’s young wife became infatuated with a $1 million ($20 million in today’s dollars), flawless double-strand pearl necklace from Cartier. Plant bartered a trade: his apartment building plus $100 in exchange for the coveted pearl necklace.

Today Plant’s former apartment is now the Cartier New York flagship store. And the necklace? It sadly fetched a mere $150,000 at auction in 1957, its value having plummeted after the advent of cultured pearls.

The Invaluable Orlov Diamond

In 1774, Count Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov gave the 189.62 carat Orlov Diamond to Catherine the Great, hoping to regain her favor and love.

The couple had a long and thrilling history: their affair began shortly before Orlov led the coup d’état that overthrew Catherine’s husband Peter III of Russia in 1762. Catherine then became empress and Orlov her lover and devoted advisor. The couple continued their relationship and had two illegitimate children together.

However Orlov fell from Catherine’s favor after her advisers—who loathed Orlov—installed Alexander Vasilchikov as her new lover and divulged Orlov’s infidelities with a much younger girl. To woo her back, Orlov presented Catherine with the stunning domed diamond. Unfortunately the gift was for naught and Orlov found himself persona non grata at Catherine’s court.

Catherine had the awe-inspiring stone mounted in an imperial scepter. The scepter remains on display amongst other pieces of tsarist regalia at the Diamond Fund of the Moscow Kremlin.

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Photo Credits: The Stone Set, Natural History Museum of LA Minblog, NYMag, Sotheby’s,The Houston Museum of Natural Science, The State Tretyakov Gallery