Tourmaline Paraiba is a rare and highly valuable gemstone that is known for its unique neon-blue or greenish-blue color. The story of its discovery in St. Jose da Batalha, a small town in the Brazilian state of Paraiba, is a fascinating one.
In the late 1980s, a local miner named Heitor Dimas Barbosa was working in a remote area near the town of Sao Jose da Batalha when he came across some unusual blue-green stones.
Intrigued by their color, he sent them to a gemologist in Sao Paulo, who identified them as a type of tourmaline that had never been seen before.