A giant 59.60-carat pink diamond named the "Pink Star" broke the world record for a gemstone when it sold for $71.2 million at Sotheby’s to set a record for any diamond or jewel at auction. The "Pink Star" is the largest in its class ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America. It surpassed the Oppenheimer Blue which sold by Christie’s Geneva in May 2016 for $57.5 million. After bidding from three clients, the diamond was sold to jewellery retailer Chow Tai Fook, who was on the telephone to Sotheby's Asia CEO Kevin Ching, for a hammer price of 490 million Hong Kong dollars ($63 million). The sale total was 553 million Hong Kong dollars once the buyer's premium was added. The buyer later renamed the diamond the CTF Pink.
When unearthed as a rough diamond by De Beers in South Africa in 1999, the Pink Star Diamond was 132.5 carats. A design team spent two years determining how the stone could best be cut and polished, casting it in epoxy over 50 times while experimenting with different treatments. The rock was unveiled in Monaco in 2003, and first went on public view that year at the the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, in the exhibition “The Splendor of Diamonds.” Half a million people saw the show over its first two months, before the museum extended its run. It was originally dubbed the Steinmetz Pink, as it was owned by the Steinmetz Group of Companies (which was the principal sponsor of the Smithsonian show).
Currently, the world’s most expensive diamond at auction is the 14.62 carat Oppenheimer Blue, which fetched $57.5 million at Christie’s Geneva in May 2016.
A 2013 sale set a world record at $83 million, but the buyer later defaulted. The house estimates its value at $72 million and owns the diamond in partnership with diamond dealer Diacore and jewelers Mellen Inc.
The oval mixed-cut stone weighs in at a hefty 59.6 carats, and is set in a platinum band. The price with fees was more than double the record for a fancy vivid pink diamond. The Unique Pink, a 15.38-carat pear-shaped fancy vivid pink, sold at Sotheby’s Geneva in May last year for $31.56 million. It was also the most paid for any lot ever sold at auction in Asia, Sotheby’s said.
The Pink Star was acquired by jeweler Chow Tai Fook, with the winning phone bid from company Chairman Henry Cheng Kar-Shun. It has been renamed the CTF Pink in memory of his father, company founder Cheng Yu-Tung and marks the brand’s 88th anniversary.
The CTF Pink is the largest internally flawless fancy vivid pink diamond graded by the Gemological Institute of America. It was mined by De Beers in Africa in 1999 and the mixed cut of its 132.5 carats took two years. The formal price was HK$553 million. It had been estimated in excess of $60 million or HK$468 million at hammer prices.
“The Pink Star has returned to rock the diamond world, for all the right reasons,” said Tobias Kormind, managing director of
77Diamonds.com, Europe’s largest online seller of diamond jewelry.
Kormind noted that diamond prices still lag the top paintings. Still, the numbers of high net worth individuals are growing while the supply of rare diamonds is diminishing, even with the recent opening of the De Beers Gaucho Kue diamond mine in Canada.
The Pink Star was bid to a record-breaking $83 million in 2014 but ultimately failed to sell after a default. In 2016, Sotheby’s partnered with specialists Diacore and Mellen Inc. over the stone.
The diamond came up for auction at Sotheby’s Geneva in November 2013, when New York-based diamond cutter Isaac Wolf placed a winning bid of 76.3 million Swiss francs ($83 million). In celebration of the world record price, which surpassed the $45.8 million 2010 sale of the Graff Pink, also at Sotheby’s Geneva house played the Pink Panther theme song. “The pink diamond, I have no hesitation in saying, is a truly amazing royal stone, fit for any royal collection, fit for any museum collection,” said auctioneer David Bennett at the time. “There is no stone of that size and color known, no other stone.”
But the excitement over the world record proved premature: Wolf, who claimed to be representing a group of investors, defaulted on the sale, and Sotheby’s, which had guaranteed a purchase price of at least $60 million, had to buy the stone itself. The house estimates its value at $72 million and owns the diamond in partnership with diamond dealer Diacore and jewelers Mellen Inc.
Africa Team
Art.net