This Rare Blue Diamond Could Be the Most Expensive Jewel Sold at Auction
What will $50 million get you at auction? Last month, Sotheby’s sold Sandro Botticelli’s Man of Sorrows painting for $45.5 million, and today it announced it is offering another masterpiece that's worth at least $48 million: a rare 15.10-carat fancy vivid blue diamond.
How rare and unusual is this jewel? “Only five other vivid blue diamonds over 10 carats have ever come to auction,” says Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia. In comparison, she points out that the auction house has sold many more paintings by Picasso and Monet over the past 20 years.
Known as the De Beers Cullinan Blue, the newly mined stone will be the largest vivid blue diamond to come to auction when it’s offered at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in April.
Currently holding the price record for a blue diamond sold at auction is the Oppenheimer Blue, a 14.62-carat fancy vivid blue diamond that sold for a staggering $57.5 million at Christie’s in May 2016. The De Beers Cullinan Blue isn’t just larger than the Oppenheimer Blue—it’s also a remarkably saturated deep shade of denim blue and internally flawless.
Discovered at the Cullinan Mine in South Africa in 2021, the rough blue diamond (which weighed nearly 40 carats) was purchased for $40 million jointly by De Beers and the Diacore diamond cutting operation. Diacore’s master cutters spent nearly a year faceting and polishing the stone into a flawless 15.10-carat step-cut diamond. It was graded as vivid blue by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the highest possible grade for colored diamonds, which has been awarded to no more than 1% of blue diamonds. These stones get their blue hue from trace amounts of boron within the diamond crystal lattice.
Over the past decade, the price of fancy blue diamonds has skyrocketed. In 2014, a game-changing sale eclipsed all past sales of blue diamonds and set a new benchmark; the Mellon Blue Diamond, a 9.75-carat fancy vivid blue pear-shaped diamond, later renamed the Zoé Diamond, sold for $32.6 million at Sotheby’s New York. The following year, records were shattered again when Sotheby’s Geneva sold the Blue Moon of Josephine, a 12.03 carat cushion-shaped internally flawless fancy vivid blue diamond for $48.5 million. And in May 2016, the Oppenheimer Blue made $57.5 million.
While few sizable blues appear at auction, their allure has captured people’s attention for centuries. They were first recorded by Jean Baptiste Tavernier in the mid-17th century when he purchased a blue diamond in the Golconda region of India. In 1668, he sold it to King Louis XIV of France, who named it the French Blue, and over the years, it was sold, stolen, and passed through several hands. Of course, it is now the world’s most famous blue diamond—the Hope Diamond, a 45.52-carat fancy-dark grayish-blue stone. It is currently on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. where it is the most visited treasure in the museum.
With more collectors in the market than ever before, Wong says there is strong international interest in the De Beers Cullinan Blue. “People are knowledgeable today, they collect across categories, and they know what they want.” Some clients will enjoy wearing the diamond, she says, and others want the pride of ownership. “It’s the most beautiful blue diamond I’ve seen in my career,” says Wong. “I won’t likely see another like this again.”
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