A rare purple-pink diamond likely to be worth tens of millions of dollars is on display in New York City this month, and is expected to draw private bids from around the globe.
The rare 14.83-carat “fancy vivid purple-pink” diamond was extracted from a Russian mine in 2017, and cut into an oval shape by masters from the Russian company Alrosa. When the raw stone was unearthed from the Ebelyakh deposit in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in northeast Russia, it weighed 27.85 carats.
Victoria Zavyalova, a spokeswoman, says Alrosa is conducting private bidding from a New York office through August. The company’s network of clients includes companies and individuals from around the world. The company could not confirm a price estimate for the diamond as of Thursday.
A similar stone called The Pink Promise—an oval-shaped, 14.93-carat fancy vivid pink diamond—was sold in 2017 by Christie’s Hong Kong for US$32.5 million, or US$2.2 million per carat.
Andrew Brown, CEO of WP Diamonds, a diamond buyer in New York, estimated that The Spirit of the Rose is likely to be worth $35 million, or between $2.25 million and $2.5 million per carat.
If the diamond is not sold during the private bidding process, it is expected to be auctioned by a third-party auction house, according to Zavyalova. Rebecca Foerster, Alrosa U.S. president, was not immediately available for comment Thursday.
The diamond is known as The Spirit of the Rose, a moniker taken from a Russian ballet of the same name (Le Spectre de la Rose), which has a romantic backstory of its own. The ballet is based on a poem by French poet Théophile Gautier about a young girl who dreams of dancing with the spirit of a souvenir rose she carries home from her first ball.
The ballet premiered in 1911 and was performed around the world at the Metropolitan Opera, London Coliseum, Royal Danish Theatre, and the Mariinsky and Bolshoi theaters, according to a statement from Alrosa.
Pink diamonds have long been among the most popular—and rare—of the colored diamonds. The price of pinks soared above blues and yellows between 2010 and 2014, followed by a relatively flat few years, according to data provided by the Fancy Color Research Foundation.
Prices have ticked up slightly during the past year. The nonprofit tracks pricing data for yellow, pink, and blue “fancy” color diamonds in the major global trading centers of Hong Kong, New York, Geneva, and Tel Aviv.
Prices for all pink fancy color diamonds increased 1.5% between Q2 2018 and Q2 2019, compared to a 1.1% bump for blue diamonds and a 4.4% decrease for yellow diamonds. Overall, prices of all fancy color diamonds ticked down 0.1% during the same period.
The Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia, a source of more than 90% of pink diamonds in the world, is set to close by 2020, which could push the high price of pinks up even higher. After almost four decades, the mine has exhausted its supply of “economically viable stones,” Bloomberg reported in July.
In recent years, rare fancy pink diamonds have set records at auction. Last November, a 18.96-carat rectangular fancy vivid pink diamond, The Pink Legacy, fetched US$50.4 million at Christie’s Geneva—the sale also set a record price per carat for a pink diamond sold at auction, at US$2.6 million, Penta has reported.
In April 2017, Sotheby’s auctioned the 59.6-carat “Pink Star,” mined by De Beers in Africa, for $71.2 million, a record auction price for any gem.
The Fancy Color Research Foundation has tracked most of the new, important fancy color gems coming into the market over the last decade, CEO Miriam Chen wrote in an email to Penta.
“We are witnessing a downward trend in the amount of stones being unearthed, especially when it comes to important finds, and even more so, large pinks in the ‘vivid’ grade,” she observes.
While the clarity of colorless diamonds is paramount in their valuation, clarity isn’t typically as big a factor with color diamonds. And pinks generally tend to have low clarity, Chen says. But The Spirit of the Rose departs from that trend.
“The fact that this stone is internally flawless could definitely have a significant impact on the price,” she says. Man Smuggle 2996 carat gem
