Sotheby’s Geneva will present The Pink Star, the most valuable diamond ever to be offered at auction, at their sale of Magnificent Jewels on 13 November 2013. A world’s natural treasure valued at over $60 million, this 59.60-carat oval cut pink diamond is the largest internally flawless fancy vivid pink diamond that the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has ever graded.
Not only has The Pink Star received the highest color and clarity grades from the GIA for pink diamonds, it has also been found to be part of the rare subgroup comprising less than 2% of all gem diamonds – known as Type IIa: stones in this group are chemically the purest of all diamond crystals and often have extraordinary optical transparency.
In addition, this extraordinarily important gem is more than twice the size of the magnificent ‘Graff Pink’ – the 24.78 carat fancy intense pink diamond which established a world auction record for a diamond and any gemstone or jewel at $46.2 million at Sotheby’s Geneva in 2010.
The current record price per carat for a pink diamond ($2,155,332) was set by a 5-carat fancy vivid pink diamond. “The occurrence of pink diamonds in nature is extremely rare in any size”, said Tom Moses, senior vice-president of the Gemological Institute of America. “It’s our experience that large polished pink diamonds – over ten carats – very rarely occur with an intense color…
The GIA Laboratory has been issuing grading reports for fifty years and this is the largest pink diamond with this depth of color (vivid pink) that we have ever characterized.” When it was mined in Africa by De Beers back in 1999, the stone weighed closer to 200 carats. It was then cut and polished by Steinmetz Diamonds over the course of two years, and first exhibited in 2003.
The result, according to the chairman of Sotheby’s jewelry division in Europe and the Middle East, David Bennett, is an unparalleled pink gem. “It is difficult to exaggerate the rarity of vivid pink diamonds weighing only five carats, so this 59.60-carat stone is simply off any scale,” Bennett said in a statement. It “passes, I believe, into the ranks of the earth’s greatest natural treasures,” he added.
