AuctionsNov 04, 2022
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Diamond From De Beers ‘Exceptional Blue’ Collection Doesn’t Sell
The 5.53-carat fancy vivid blue diamond was the first of eight rare stones Sotheby’s will offer through 2023.
These eight blue diamonds, weighing 32.09 carats total and valued at more than $70 million, are being auctioned at Sotheby’s through next year. The first stone offered, a 5.53-carat diamond, went up for auction this week but nobody bought it.
Geneva—The first stone in a collection of rare blue diamonds offered at auction Wednesday failed to find a buyer.
Sotheby’s Geneva offered the 5.53-carat blue diamond at its “Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels” sale on Wednesday. The fancy vivid blue cushion-shaped stone was estimated to sell for between $11 million and $15 million.
“The blue is an exceptional stone in every sense: it attracted significant interest prior to today’s sale. While we didn’t get to see it sell in the room tonight, we are confident it will find a new home very soon,” Sotheby’s said.
The stone is the first of the “The De Beers Exceptional Blue Collection”—a group of eight rare fancy blue diamonds—to hit the auction block.
The rest will be doled out at other Sotheby’s sales throughout the rest of this year and next.
The collection is valued at a total $70 million.
Sourced from the Cullinan mine in South Africa, De Beers and Diacore jointly purchased the original five rough blue diamonds, with the latter cutting and polishing them into the collection of eight stones.
Next to go up for auction from the Exceptional Blues collection is a 3.24-carat cushion brilliant-cut, internally flawless, fancy vivid blue diamond ($5 million-$8 million) and a 2.08-carat cushion-cut fancy intense blue diamond ($1.2 million-$1.5 million), which will be offered at Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels sale in New York on Dec. 7.
Another colored diamond failed to make waves at auction this week.
The 18.18-carat fancy vivid “Fortune Pink” diamond sold for $28.8 million at Christie’s Geneva on Tuesday, within its very conservative $25 million to $35 million pre-sale estimate.
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