This Bonkers 228.3 Carat White Diamond, the Largest in Auction History, Could Fetch Up to $30 Million This Spring
Christie’s is slated to have a blockbuster Spring with the upcoming sale of “The Rock,” the largest white diamond to ever be offered at auction. “I’ve been at Christie’s for 25 years and Christie’s has been around for 256 years and in all of this time, this is the largest white diamond that’s ever come up for sale at auction,” Rahul Kadakia told Robb Report. “That’s quite something. It’s really a unicorn.”
The 228.31-carat stone, valued at an estimate of $20 million to $30 million, has only passed through three previous owners’ hands and Kadakia says Christie’s first got wind of the diamond from the original owner approximately 20 years ago. The company was involved with the first transaction of the stone, which was sold privately. “The current owner decided that the market is quite healthy, which is true,” says Kadakia. The diamond market is in a particularly active space right now. Oiur auction sales last year, doubled the sales from 2020.”
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Christie's
The pear-shaped diamond was mined and polished in South Africa and is a G color, VS1 clarity stone. It is the largest existing D-Z color pear-shaped diamond ever graded by the GIA laboratory. The largest diamond previously sold at Christie’s was a 163.41 carat diamond, which hammered in at $33,701,000 at Christie’s Geneva in November 2017. “The Rock” not only surpasses it in size, but will also likely sell for much more.
“Honestly, the stone has no price,” says Kadakia. What’s rare apart from the size—it’s so large, the size of an egg—is, let’s say you have five collectors trying to buy the stone, and the day after the sale and one of those clients that didn’t buy it comes back and says, ‘Look, buyer’s remorse. Can you find me another stone?’ It took us 256 years to find one. Where is the other stone? I don’t know. That’s what’s rare about it.”
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