The 23-carat fancy vivid blue diamond, set to headline Christie’s May jewelry auction, was expected to sell for as much as $50 million.
Like De Beers, Alrosa Sees Improvement in Early 2020
It said demand for rough diamonds is “steady” as cutters restocked following a solid holiday season.

Moscow—Alrosa Group recorded a double-digit jump in sales in January as cutters restock on the back of a strong holiday season.
The diamond miner reported Monday sales of rough and polished diamonds totaled $405 million in the month of January—$390.2 million in rough and the remaining $14.8 million in polished.
(All figures include the company’s integration of polished manufacturer Kristall Production Corp.)
That is a 44 percent jump from January 2019, when diamond sales totaled only $281.5 million, a harbinger of what was to come in a year that ended with a double-digit drop in sales for the world’s two biggest diamond miners, Alrosa and De Beers.
Deputy CEO Evgeny Agureev described demand for rough diamonds in January as “steady,” as cutters continued restocking on the back of positive retail sales over the holiday season.
De Beers also recorded a year-over-year increase in sales to start the year, with rough sales totaling $545 million in the first sales cycle of the year, up 9 percent over the same period last year.
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