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SOTHEBY'S

Diamond earrings sold for record $57m at Geneva auction

Two spectacular diamonds mounted as earrings fetched a record $57.4-million (51.8 million euros) on Tuesday at auction in Geneva, with an unnamed Asia-based buyer netting both, Sotheby's said.

Published: 17 May 2017 08:26 CEST
Diamond earrings sold for record $57m at Geneva auction
Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP
The earrings were sold as separate lots. After protracted bidding, the flawless and vivid “The Apollo Blue” fetched $42.087-million and the equally intensely luminescent “The Artemis Pink” went for $15.33-million, buyers premium included.
   
The earrings, named after Greek gods, had respectively been valued at between $38-million and $50-million and $12.5-million and $18-million.
   
The 14.54-carat “Apollo Blue” is the largest gemstone in its category ever to be auctioned and has been cut and polished to a pear shape.
   
The 16-carat “Artemis Pink” is near identical in shape. It is also one of the world's most “chemically pure” diamonds, according to the Gemological Institute of America, which experts say gives the stone such a high degree of transparency.

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DIAMOND

Rare pink diamond to go under hammer in Geneva

An extremely rare pink diamond will be auctioned in Geneva on November 11 by Sotheby's, which says it is worth between $23 and $38 million.

Published: 8 November 2020 12:54 CET
Rare pink diamond to go under hammer in Geneva
A model poses with the “The Spirit of the Rose” diamond during a press preview on Friday. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP
Named “The Spirit of the Rose” after a famous Russian ballet, the 14.83-carat diamond mined in Russia is the biggest ever to go under the hammer in its category — “fancy vivid purple-pink”.
 
The occurrence of pink diamonds in nature is extremely rare in any size,” Gary Schuler, head of Sotheby's jewellery division, said in a statement. “Only one per cent of all pink diamonds are larger than 10-carats.”
   
Speaking to AFP, Benoit Repellin, head of fine jewellery auctions at Sotheby's Geneva, said the oval-shaped diamond was “completely pure.”
 
 
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The rough diamond was unearthed by Russia's Alrosa — one of the world's leading diamond producers — in the Republic of Sakha in the northeast of the country in July 2017.
   
Repellin said it took a painstaking year for cutting masters to turn the diamond into its polished form.
   
Sotheby's said the world auction record for a diamond and any gemstone or jewel was the “CTF Pink Star”, a 59.60-carat oval pink diamond that sold for $71.2 million in Hong Kong in 2017.
   
According to Repellin, five out of the 10 most valuable diamonds ever sold at auction were pink.
   
The sale of this gem coincides with the closure of the world's largest pink diamond mine in Australia after it exhausted its reserves of the precious stones.
   
The Argyle mine, in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, churned out more than 90 percent of the world's pink diamonds.
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