According to the Telegraph, an extremely rare 8.41-carat internally flawless,
fancy vivid pink diamond is estimated to sell for £8–9.5 million when it is
auctioned by Sotheby’s Hong Kong next week.
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| courtesy the telegraph.com |
Just
0.1 per cent of the 20 million carats of rough diamonds produced annually are
pink, and, of these, the number weighing more than half a carat would fit into
the palm of your hand. No wonder then that many of history’s most prized gems –
from the Williamson presented to Queen Elizabeth II at her wedding, the
Hortense from the Crown Jewels of France, the Darya-i-Nur from the Iranian
Crown Jewels and Babur’s Agra – are pink diamonds.
Hewn
from a 19.54-carat rough pink diamond that was mined in 2010 by De Beers, in
addition to its size the pear-shaped diamond owes its incredible rarity to its
internally flawless clarity and fancy vivid purple-pink colour.
Pink
diamonds are the result of an imperfection in the stone’s atomic structure,
leading to pink grain lines. The more of these grain lines form, the more
intense the stone’s pink colour. So the very formation of a pink diamond leads
to less than desirable clarity, with almost all stones showing surface graining
or having a hazy overall appearance due to internal graining.
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| courtesy the telegraph.com |
A
stone of this size that possesses not only a vibrant pink-purple colour but also internally flawless clarity, is
virtually unseen in any other pink diamond sold at auction. In the words of
Sotheby’s, it is “a treasure of nature…[and] ranks amongst the rarest and most
desirable of coloured diamonds ever seen at auction”.
