A rare pear-shaped, purple-pink “internally flawless” diamond will be auctioned off later this year in Hong Kong and is expected to fetch up to USD15 million (HKD116 million).
Terry Chu, the senior director for China and Southeast Asia in Sotheby’s jewellery department, says the gem is “one in a million, or even one in ten million”. According to Sotheby’s, only 0.1% of the twenty million carats of rough diamonds produced annually is pink.
Though Chu says she could give you 100 technical reasons why this 8.41-carat diamond is so “important and rare”, she offers one groan-inducing explanation: “At the same time, I’m a woman. I just feel it is a very romantic and sexy pink diamond”.
Last year, Sotheby’s auctioned off a 118-carat white diamond in Hong Kong for a whopping USD30.8 million (HKD238.7 million), breaking world records. Chu described it as having the size “literally like a free-range egg” and the weight of a “small tangerine”. When we describe diamonds, we also like to use food references (preferably food that’s been allowed to roam freely).
Now that purple-pink diamond seems like a bargain, doesn’t it?
Sources: Brisbane Times, New Tang Dynasty Television, Wall Street Journal
