Yellow Diamonds Rise While You Weren’t Looking

June 10th, 2013 by Noam Flint

Pink and blue diamonds often sell for small fortunes, and red and black diamonds might have the most sex appeal. As far as colored diamonds go, yellows may not draw the same kind of dollars as fancy stones in some other colors of the rainbow. But while they escape the scrutiny of the popular press, yellow gems continue to slowly but surely rise in price, consistent money-makers.

Of all the yellow diamonds harvested throughout the world, the 11-year-old Ellendale mine in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia is responsible for producing approximately half. In one weeks’ time, 34 lots consisting of tens of thousands of stones extracted at Ellendale will be brought to tender, giving collectors of the canary-colored crystals an opportunity to snap them up. For the next seven days they can be seen in Antwerp by appointment. eDiamond has elected to auction off over 30,000 stones this time around, since they sold out completely at the last public sale of Ellendale gems.

The chance to check out Ellendale fancy yellow should not be passed up. For the last three years, Tiffany& Co. has held the prior rights to purchase the production of the Ellendale mine. The luxury jewelry manufacturer and retailer prides itself upon its namesake yellow gem, a mammoth 128-carat diamond discovered in 1878 and never sold in the intervening 135 years, almost always on display at their flagship location in New York City. Today Tiffany is still on the ascension: this week it announced that it would open up a department store in Moscow within mere months, the firm’s first on Russian soil. Only half a year ago, the company revealed that it would soon be building its first store in Paris, France.

For the last fifty-plus years, the diamond buyers who have expressed the most interest in yellow stones are Graff Diamonds. Same Graff who recently bought the magnificent 5.3 carat deep blue diamond for 9.6 Million dollars. The firm has at one time or another taken possession of nearly all of the biggest yellow diamonds on the planet. Thankfully, they don’t just stick those babies in the back of a vault for safekeeping, they often turn them into beautiful jewelry. Just this week the company unveiled a new one-of-a-kind platinum and gold cuff set that features a 38-carat pear-shaped fancy yellow stone. Surrounded by an array of top quality white diamonds, the cuff contains 140 carats in all.

They may grab fewer headlines that stones of some other hues, but fancy yellows are no less magnificent than the rest – and maybe even more so.