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AuctionsFeb 09, 2018
Sotheby’s Selling 100-Carat Round Brilliant for Over $33M
The D color, flawless diamond is available through private sale at the Sotheby’s Diamonds retail store in London.
Sotheby’s told National Jeweler that the asking price for this 102.34-carat diamond is “considerably higher” than the amount garnered by Christie’s “The Art of De Grisogono, Creation I,” which sold for $33.7 million last year.
London--On the occasion of the first anniversary of the opening of Sotheby’s Diamonds, the auction house’s retail boutique on New Bond Street, Sotheby’s is unveiling a very rare diamond for sale.
It’s offering a 102.34-carat, Type IIa, D color, flawless, round brilliant diamond.
Sotheby’s said the GIA-graded stone is the largest round, D color, flawless diamond on record, and the only round brilliant over 100 carats with perfect color and clarity.
The auction house displayed the stone to the public Feb. 8 and 9 at the New Bond Street salon.
De Beers mined the original rough diamond, which weighed 425 carats, in Botswana about two years ago, then Diacore cut and polished the stone in Johannesburg and New York over a period of six months.
Though Sotheby’s isn’t publicly disclosing the exact asking price, a spokesperson for the auction house told National Jeweler it expects the diamond to sell for more than any of the seven diamonds over 100 carats sold at auction, of which Sotheby’s sold five.
The most expensive of those stones was a 118.28-carat D color, flawless, Type IIa oval diamond that sold for $30.8 million, or $260,252 per carat, at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in October 2013. It currently holds the price-per-carat record for a colorless diamond at auction.
Sotheby’s said that the round will not only beat that price per carat, but also top the highest price paid for any diamond jewelry at auction, which stands at $33.7 million for De Grisogono’s “The Art of De Grisogono, Creation I,” auctioned at Christie’s last November. That necklace featured a 163.41-carat emerald-cut stone.
The asking price for this stone is “considerably higher,” Sotheby’s said.
Patti Wong, founder and chairman of Sotheby’s Diamonds, said: “This stone is over 100 carats of flawless perfection. In the course of my long career, which has brought me close to some of the greatest stones the earth has ever yielded, I have not encountered anything quite like this.
“With its outstanding weight, its perfect color, clarity and cut, it is a masterpiece of nature brought to life by human hand, blazing with a brilliant
firework-like display of almost every color on the spectrum—mesmerizing to behold. It is a huge privilege to mark the first anniversary of our London salon with the exhibition of such a superlative stone.”
Sotheby’s operates two other Sotheby’s Diamonds retail locations, one in New York and one in Hong Kong.
Sotheby’s operates two other Sotheby’s Diamonds retail locations, one in New York and one in Hong Kong.
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