Vivid pink diamond could go for $35 million at auction

GENEVA/LONDON:

The largest pear-shaped fancy vivid pink diamond ever put up for auction could sell for up to $35 million at a Christie’s sale of rare jewels on November 8, the auctioneer said on Wednesday.

“The diamond weighs 18.18 carats, which is of course an extremely fortuitous number for Asian collectors. We’ve had a huge amount of interest around the world already,” said Max Fawcett, head of Christie’s jewelry department in Geneva. “The color is exceptional. It’s a true vivid pink and a clean stone. It really, really is a gem and something that we haven’t seen in a long time at Christie’s.”

The Fortune Pink Diamond is estimated to go for $25 million to $35 million. The largest vivid pink diamond sold at Christie’s was the 18.96-carat Winston Pink Legacy, which got $50.4 million in 2018, a world record price per carat for a pink diamond sold at auction.

In 2020, a rare pink diamond derived from the biggest raw stone of the colour ever found in Russia was sold for $26.6 million on Wednesday at Sotheby's in Geneva. Dubbed "The Spirit of the Rose", the 14.83-carat stone's final sale price including commission set a world record for a purple-pink diamond.

It took just a few minutes for the bids to reach 21 million Swiss francs after the marble-sized stone came up in an online auction, with the final buyer remaining anonymous. Sotheby's auctioneer Benoit Repellin called the diamond a "wonder of nature" and added that prices for the pink gems are going up as they become increasingly rare.

The "Spirit of the Rose" was faceted from a 27.85-carat stone found in 2017 by diamond mining firm Alrosa in Russia's Sakha republic in northeast Siberia. It took around a year of painstaking work to cut the finished diamond to shape while preserving its pink colour.

Pink diamonds are the rarest of the precious gems and the most in-demand on the global market. The world record for a pink diamond dates back to 2017 when a stone known as the CTF Star Pink was sold in Hong Kong for $71.2 million. Five of the 10 most expensive diamonds ever sold have been pink, Sotheby's said, with all sold within the past decade.

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