Hong Kong – The “Pink Star” diamond sold for a record-breaking 71.17 million US dollars at an auction by British auction house Sotheby’s in Hong Kong on Tuesday night.
“The Pink Star was sought after by three clients before selling to a bidder on the phone with our Asia CEO Kevin Ching,” Sotheby’s said on its Twitter account.
The sale of the 59.6-carat pink diamond was part of Sotheby’s magnificent jewels and jadeite auction.
The so-called Pink Star diamond, the world’s most valuable diamond, is worn by a model on March 29, 2017, in Sotheby’s Auction House in Hong Kong. The stone is expected to fetch upwards of 60 million dollars in Tuesday’s auction. Photo: Jayne Russell via ZUMA Wire/dpa
The oval mixed-cut pink diamond, roughly the size of a quail’s egg, is the largest internally flawless fancy vivid pink diamond the Gemological Institute of America has ever graded, said Sotheby’s.
“The extraordinary size of this 59.60-carat diamond, paired with its richness of colour, surpasses any known pink diamond recorded in history,” said David Bennett, Worldwide Chairman of Sotheby’s Jewellery Division in a statement.
The gem was mined by De Beers in 1999 and the 132.5 carat rough diamond was cut and polished over a period of two years by Steinmetz Diamonds.
The previous record for a pink diamond was held by the “Graff Pink,” a 24.78-carat diamond that went for 46.16 million dollars at Sotheby’s Geneva in November 2010.
The “Pink Star” itself was previously sold by Sotheby’s in 2013 for more than 83 million dollars, but the bidder defaulted on payment.
The buyer, New York diamond cutter Isaac Wolf, told media at the time he was hired by a consortium of investors to bid on the jewel.
The current price-per-carat auction record for diamonds lies with “The Blue Moon of Josephine,” a 12.03-carat blue diamond that was purchased by Hong Kong businessman Joseph Lau, for 48.5 million dollars in 2015.
– dpa
