Pink diamond sold at Sotheby’s for $11m Things have changed dramatically in the diamond industry over the past years. Once upon a time only a white or a blue-white diamond was considered top of the stones. Today colored diamonds are in and are fetching good prices. Just try and buy one!
Sold to the millionaire Millionaire Lev Leviev has bought a pink diamond weighing nearly 11 carats for $10.9 million at Sotheby’s. The purchase was by Leviev Diamonds. This is the third highest price ever paid for a pink diamond in an auction. In November 2010, Sotheby’s sold a pink diamond for $45.75 million, which remains the most expensive stone ever sold at auction.
Colors are in The whole of the fancy color diamond market, perhaps with the exception of yellow (“Canary”) diamonds, has until recently always been something of a small “insider’s club.” These ultra-rare gems were sold only in the most exclusive of fine jewelry stores and were the exclusive domain of very serious collectors who were extremely wealthy. The rest of us in the world had never heard of fancy color diamonds.
What celebrities wear This has changed greatly in the past 20 or so years. Now, who doesn’t know about natural fancy color diamonds? It’s not uncommon these days to read about the greatest celebrities of the day wearing pink, blue, or yellow diamonds down the red carpet. Perhaps the most famous fancy color diamond to grace the pages of celebrity gossip magazines worldwide was the 6 carat monster fancy vivid pink diamond that Ben Affleck gave Jennifer Lopez when he proposed to her.
Record Setting Pink Diamond Since that fateful day in 2002, Pink Diamonds have become increasingly popular. To make matters worse, the supply of natural fancy pink diamonds in the world is extremely low. In fact, almost all of the world’s pink diamonds come from one mine in Western Australia. The famed Argyle mine also produces a large percentage of the world’s brown (aka, “champagne” and “cognac”) color diamonds.
The Argyle mine Before the discovery of this mine in the 1980′s, production of fancy pink diamonds had been scant at best. When Argyle went live, it quickly gained the reputation as the only reliable consistent source of high quality pinks in the world. Since Argyle had a virtual monopoly of the world’s pink diamond market, they began to invest in marketing them and were responsible for driving demand even further.
Rare means pricey As you might imagine, this combination of extreme popularity with extreme scarcity makes for some very pricy diamonds. Perhaps with the exception of red diamonds, high quality pinks are the most expensive natural diamond color in the market today. In fact, the most expensive diamond every sold at auction was a 5.00 carat cushion-shaped fancy vivid pink sold in a Hong Kong Christie’s auction in December 2009. The diamond was sold for $10.8 million dollars and actually set two diamond records.
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