Pink diamond sets auction history
Hong Kong jewellery retailer Chow Tai Fook bought a 59.6-carat pink for about $71m, setting the world record for the top auction price for any gem. But the stone has an unusual distinction: it had attracted even higher bids in the past.
Hong Kong jewellery retailer Chow Tai Fook bought a 59.6carat pink for about $71m, setting the world record for the top auction price for any gem.
But the stone has an unusual distinction: it attracted even higher bids in the past.
Sotheby’s said on Tuesday the jeweller made the HK$553m ($71.16m) winning bid for the Pink Star, ending a five-minute contest that included three phone bidders. The diamond dethroned the Oppenheimer Blue, which fetched $58m in May 2016 at Christie’s.
In a quirk of auction history, the record price for the Pink Star is about $12m lower than the $83m offer Sotheby’s adjudicated it for in 2013. That sale collapsed because the buyer, diamond-cutter Isaac Wolf, never paid and the auction house had to reclaim the stone.
Chow Tai Fook’s purchase gives Sotheby’s some respite after it failed to sell other major gems in 2016, including the biggest rough diamond found in more than 100 years and a blue diamond ring that once belonged to Hollywood actress Shirley Temple.
Chow Tai Fook, founded in 1929, is the world’s largest jeweller, operating more than 2,000 jewellery and watch stores across greater China. This is not its first purchase of the kind: in 2016 it bought a green diamond for $17m at a Christie’s auction and in 2010 the jeweller set a record with its $35m purchase of a rough diamond from Cullinan. In 2015, Chow Tai Fook unveiled a necklace made with 24 gems cut from that 507carat stone.
More recently, the chain has been targeting younger shoppers with gold Star Wars figures and diamond-encrusted Mickey Mouse pendants.
The Pink Star was estimated to be worth more than $60m. It is the largest internally flawless diamond of its kind that the Gemological Institute of America has ever graded. The colour is fancy pink, the highest grade, and the purity of its crystals ranks among the top 2% in the world.
Steinmetz Diamonds, owned by Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz, spent two years cutting and polishing the stone, which was mined by De Beers in Botswana. The stone was then worn by Danish model Helena Christensen for the first time in Monaco in 2003.
Pink diamonds get their colour from a process known as plastic deformation, whereby pressure changes create structural anomalies in the crystals.
Sotheby’s did not change its practices for accepting bids in the auction as buyer defaults were “extremely rare”, said spokeswoman Catherine Allen.