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Sotheby’s Sells 10-Carat Blue Diamond for $32M
The De Beers Millennium Jewel 4 is an oval-shaped fancy vivid blue and is one of a dozen diamonds the miner assembled to mark the year 2000.
Sold Tuesday at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for $31.8 million, the De Beers Millennium Jewel 4 is now the most expensive jewel ever sold at auction in Asia.
Hong Kong--De Beers Millennium Jewel 4, one of the dozen rare diamonds De Beers assembled to mark the year 2000, sold for $31.8 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on Tuesday.
An anonymous buyer snapped up the 10.10-carat oval-shaped fancy vivid blue diamond, paying about $3.2 million per carat and falling into the range expected for the stone’s sale.
When Sotheby’s announced the auction of the Millennium Jewel 4 last month, it predicted the blue-hued diamond would go for between $30 and $35 million.
The Millennium Jewel 4 is now the most expensive jewel ever sold at auction in Asia, just breaking the record set by the $30.6 million sale of a 118.28-carat D flawless diamond in October 2013.
While the blue diamond was a record-setter for the region, the overall auction results were not extremely robust.
The sale totaled $73.3 million, selling 66 percent by lot and 69 percent by value. Of the 271 lots, 93 went unsold.
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