Editor’s Note
This article reports on the record-breaking $50 million sale of the rare 18.96-carat ‘Pink Legacy’ pink diamond at Christie’s Geneva, highlighting a significant moment in the high-stakes world of luxury jewelry auctions.
An extremely rare and priceless 19-carat pink diamond has been sold for $50 million (3.63 billion rupees). The auction was conducted by the British auction house Christie’s in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday. Rahul Kadakia, head of the jewelry department at Christie’s, oversaw the auction process for the 18.96-carat ‘Pink Legacy’ diamond. In this auction, the famous jeweler Harry Winston placed a bid of $50 million to acquire this remarkable diamond. This sale has made it the pink diamond sold at the highest price per carat in the world.
Last November, a pink diamond of approximately 15 carats was auctioned in Hong Kong for $32.5 million. The bid reached $2.176 million per carat, which was the highest bid ever recorded for a pink diamond at that time. That diamond was discovered in a mine in South Africa about 100 years ago.
Kadakia described the Pink Legacy as one of the world’s finest diamonds. Previously, the diamond was owned by the Oppenheimer family, who ran the De Beers diamond mining company for decades. The rectangular-cut diamond is graded as ‘Fancy Vivid’, which represents the highest possible color grade category. Christie’s stated that a pink diamond of 19 carats had never been auctioned before. Until now, only four pink diamonds over 10 carats have ever been auctioned.