Blue Diamonds $10.86 Million World Record – Over $1 Million per carat

November 18th, 2012 by Noam Flint

Pink and blue diamonds are the stones often bought by investors and as it turns out seem to be most worthwhile. Last week, Sotheby’s held their Geneva sale of Magnificent Jewels. The highlight of the auction was of a very rare gem, a Pear Shaped Flawless Fancy Deep Blue Diamond weighing 10.48 carat. It was predicted that this magnificent diamond will be sold for approximately $4,500,000 ($4.5M). However, this diamond broke the price record for deep blue diamonds and for briolette diamonds fetching an astounding $10,860,000 ($10.86M). Over 1 Million Dollars per carat! It was purchased over the phone by Laurence Graff, a luxury jeweler from the UK.

This amazing record is set only two weeks after a 9.46 carat blue diamond was discovered at the Karowe mine.

Making a Ten Million Dollars bet on a Blue Diamond

Mark Emanuel, of American jeweler David Webb, told Reuters that this diamond was probably bought for recutting purposes:

“It is an extremely rare 10-carat deep blue briolette that can be recut to a 7-carat vivid blue”.

He also made another interesting comment worth noticing:

“Most of these diamonds are bought on the basis of speculating and recutting. That’s why we come. As a diamond dealer we look at the potential of a stone.”

Can you imagine the pressure in recutting a $10M dollar diamond? Can you imagine its value if it turns into a 7 carat Flawless Vivid Blue?

Though we cannot answer the first question we can try to answer the second.

On April 2012 a new world record for blue diamonds was almost set – At the Sotheby’s auction, an 8.01 carat square emerald cut Vivid Blue Diamond was sold almost $12.8M USD. This means a price per carat of $1.6 Million Dollars. Last October the world record for a blue diamond was set by a 6.01 Fancy Vivid Blue Diamond – $1,686,000.

Diamonds are priced per carat and when the carat size goes up so does the price per carat. If in fact this diamond will be cut into a Flawless 7 carat vivid blue diamond we see no reason why it won’t be sold for much more than the previous $1.686M record and by that making it probably the only diamond that has broken the record twice.

With that in mind, let’s do the math – considering it is a FL vivid blue and will weigh over 7 carat we will set a minimum price per carat of $2,000,000 (these diamonds are priceless and your guess is as good as ours). Multiply it by 7 carat and we get somewhere in the $14M. An amazing bet!

Now, all that is left is to sit back and watch for it in future auctions.