A podcast prompted Smith to share his views on where origin fits into the natural diamond story and the viability of branded diamonds.
Alrosa’s Biggest ‘Dynasty’ Diamond Fails to Sell
But the other four diamonds in the collection found buyers.

Moscow--Alrosa sold four of the five diamonds cut from a 179-carat piece of rough and dubbed “The Dynasty Collection.”
However, the largest stone of the lot--a 51.38-carat D color, VVS1 diamond called “The Dynasty”--didn’t sell. The mining company said the stone, the highest-quality diamond of its size ever cut by Alrosa, was withdrawn from the sale because it did not receive a high enough offer.
Alrosa did not release individual estimates for the diamonds prior to the sale, though back in August, Pavel Vinikhin, who runs the cutting and polishing arm Diamonds Alrosa, told National Jeweler they placed the value of the entire collection around $10 million.
Following the stones’ sale, which took place online last week, Alrosa said neither the prices nor the buyers are being disclosed but noted that the four diamonds sold for an average of 30 percent more than their reserve prices.
Cut and polished in Russia from a 179-carat rough diamond mined in 2015 and dubbed “The Romanovs,” the stones in the Dynasty Collection ranged in size from 51 carats to 1.39 carats.
The four smaller diamonds that sold were: the 16.67-carat round brilliant Sheremetevs; the Orlovs, a 5.05-carat oval; the 1.73-carat pear-shaped Vorontsovs; and a 1.39-carat oval-shaped diamond called the Yusupovs. All four are D color, VVS1 stones.
The name of the collection, as well as the names of the individual stones, are all nods to the Romanov Era in Russia.
Alrosa heralded the cutting of the 179-carat stone into these five high-quality diamonds as “a start to a new stage in the development of Alrosa’s cutting division” for large white and colored diamonds.
The company said timing and terms for the auction of the final Dynasty diamond will be announced in the future.
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