The largest blue diamond ever sold is set to fetch £36million at auction.
The 15.10 carat De Beers Cullinan Blue diamond is the largest to ever appear at an auction.
It is also the “largest internally flawless step cut vivid blue diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America.
The 39.35 carat rough stone was discovered by Petral Diamonds in South Africa’s Cullinan mine in April 2021.
Three months later, De Beers and Diacore bought the stone for £30 million renaming it the De Beers Cullinan Blue.
The Cullinan mine is the source of the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found - the Cullinan Diamond which was unearthed in 1905.
The two largest stones cut from that historic rough diamond are today part of the Crown Jewels and seven other major diamonds from it are privately owned by the Queen.
The De Beers Cullinan Blue will be sold in a stand-alone sale during Sotheby’s Luxury Week, taking place on Tuesday 27 April at Sotheby’s Hong Kong.
Prior to the sale, the diamond will go on show in New York, London, Dubai, UAE, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Taipei.
Among the rarest of all coloured diamonds, blue diamonds are a fluke of nature, their blue usually caused by the presence of trace amounts of the rare element boron within the diamond crystal lattice.
Tobias Kormind, managing director of Europe’s largest online jeweller 77 Diamonds, said yesterday the diamond is “an object of extraordinary rarity which holds world-record-breaking potential.
He added: “It is larger than, while of the same quality as, the most expensive blue diamond sold at auction - the 14.63 carat Oppenheimer Blue, sold at Christie’s Geneva in 2016 for £44 million.
“Blue diamonds have a history of performing well at auction.”
