The G-color is not the highest grade, but the top-grade D-colored diamond is the fourth on the underside.
Christie’s has said that ‘The Rock’, an egg-shaped white diamond, billed as the largest of its kind to go up for auction on Wednesday was worth more than 21.6 million Swiss francs (USD 21.75 million), including fees. Sold in the range of expected albeit at the low end.
The 228-carat pear-shaped G-colored stone, with its platinum pendant mounting, has a gross weight of 61.3 g (2.2 oz) and measures 5.4 cm by 3.1 cm (2.1 in by 1.2 in), making it one of the is about. One medium chicken egg.
The G-color is not the highest grade, but the top-grade D-colored diamond is the fourth on the underside.
The Rock was purchased by an unidentified private buyer, with pre-auction estimates ranging from 19 million to 30 million francs.
Max Fawcett, head of jewelry at Christie’s Geneva, praised a successful sale in an ‘unknown territory’ for a one-of-a-kind stone.
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The ‘Red Cross’ diamond, a 205.1-carat fancy yellow stone, also sold on Wednesday for approximately 14.2 million francs, more than double the pre-sale estimate. The diamond was cut from a rough stone excavated in South Africa’s Griqualand mines in the early twentieth century and auctioned for the first time in 1918.
Fawcett testified to a ‘huge amount of interest’ in Red Cross diamonds, saying that an unspecified ‘7-figure amount’ from the proceeds of the sale to an unspecified private buyer would be donated to the International Red Cross Movement, a humanitarian aid organization based in Geneva.