GENEVA – Christie’s says “The Rock”, an egg-sized white diamond billed as the largest of its kind to go to auction, sold for more than 21.6 million Swiss francs ($ 21.75 million) on Wednesday, including fees – albeit at the lower end of the expected range. .
The G-color is not the highest grade, but the fourth in the lower letter of the top-grade D-color diamond.
An undisclosed individual buyer acquired The Rock, for which the pre-auction estimate was between 19 million and 30 million francs.
Max Fawcett, head of jewelry at Christie’s Geneva, welcomed a successful sale in “unfamiliar territory” for his type of stone.
Also under the hammer on Wednesday was the “Red Cross” diamond, a 205.1-carat fancy yellow stone that collected about 14.2 million francs, double the pre-sale estimate. The diamond was cut from a rough stone discovered in the Grikuland mine in South Africa in the early 20th century and was first auctioned in 1918.
Fawcett testified a “huge amount of interest” on the Red Cross diamond, stating that an unspecified “7-digit sum” would be donated to the International Red Cross Movement, Geneva, from the proceeds of the sale to an unspecified individual buyer. Based humanitarian aid group.
