‘Apollo’ and ‘Artemis’ Set an Auction Record for Earrings

Geneva--A non-matching pair of pear-shaped fancy color diamonds have become the most valuable pair of earrings ever sold at auction.

The “Apollo Blue” and “Artemis Pink” diamonds hit the auction block at Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels sale in Geneva, where they were sold as separate lots but garnered a combined total of $57.4 million.

The Apollo Blue is a fancy vivid blue diamond that weighs 14.54 carats. The internally flawless, Type IIb pear-shaped stone went for $42.1 million, falling within its pre-sale estimate of $38 to $50 million.

The Artemis Pink, a 16-carat fancy intense Type IIa pink pear-shaped diamond of VVS2 clarity, also sold within its pre-sale range when it garnered $15.3 million.

The same anonymous buyer bought both diamonds.

Sotheby’s originally named the stones after Apollo and Artemis, “a twin brother and sister of great power and beauty who were among the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities,” but the buyer has renamed the stones.

The Apollo Blue has been changed to “The Memory of Autumn Leaves” and the Artemis Pink was renamed “The Dream of Autumn Leaves.”

They’re the most valuable earrings ever to be offered at auction, according to Sotheby’s, setting a world auction record for a pair of earrings but not breaking any records individually.

The auction record for a pink diamond was set last month by the $71.2 million sale of the 59.60-carat “CTF Pink,” which is also the most expensive jewel ever sold at auction.

The most expensive blue diamond ever sold at auction is the Oppenheimer Blue. The 14.62-carat fancy vivid blue stone sold for $57.5 million, or $3.9 million per carat, in May 2016.

Tuesday’s sale at Sotheby’s Geneva totaled $151.5 million with 90 percent of the lots selling.

Two more records were set at the auction--for a fancy intense purplish-pink diamond when a 7.04-carat diamond ring from Piaget went for $13.2 million, and the record per-carat price for that same fancy intense purplish pink diamond at $1.9 million per carat.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on May 17 to reflect the renaming of the diamonds.