Auctioneer Sotheby’s has sold the most expensive pair of earrings in the world, at a combined price of A$78.3 million.

Sotheby’s inaugural sale of magnificent jewels in Geneva was headlined by ‘The Apollo and Artemis Diamonds’, becoming the most valuable earrings ever sold at auction. There was dynamic bidding on the phone, online and in the room throughout with over 90% lots sold and two thirds over the high estimate with multiple records.

“In the last five to 10 years, the price seems to be escalating rapidly. And we just sold this world record stone, and that was a pink diamond,” said David Bennett, worldwide chairman of Sotheby’s International Jewellery division, ahead of the auction.

“Certainly people who own important coloured diamonds are aware that the market is strong.”

The pair is made up of two pear-shaped diamonds; one Fancy Vivid blue diamond named Apollo, which sold for A$57.4 and one Fancy Intense pink diamond named Artemis, which sold for A$20.9 to the same telephone bidder.

The two diamonds were sold as separate lots, but will remain together as a pair.

The 14.54-carat Fancy Vivid blue diamond, Apollo, was undoubtedly the star of the show, with its unbelievably rare Fancy Vivid Blue colour. The world’s most expensive blue diamond, the 14.62-carat Oppenheimer Blue, is a Fancy Vivid – it sold for A$80 million at Christie’s in Geneva last May.

When considered as a pair with the sensational Artemis, a 16-carat Fancy Intense pink diamond, the set can be described as being in a class of its own.

THE APOLLO AND ARTEMIS DIAMONDS. EXCEPTIONAL FANCY VIVID BLUE DIAMOND WEIGHING 14.54 CARATS, INTERNALLY FLAWLESS, TYPE IIB. IMPORTANT FANCY INTENSE PINK DIAMOND WEIGHING 16.00 CARATS, VVS2 CLARITY, TYPE IIA. MOUNTED AS A PAIR OF EARRINGS. SOLD AT SOHEBY’S MAGNIFICENT JEWELS & NOBLE JEWELS ON 16 MAY IN GENEVA. SOURCE: SOTHEBY’S

“The divine diamond twins – one pink and the other blue – are perfectly matched in size, cut and tonality,” Sotheby’s says of the lots on its website. “The stones are currently mounted as a spectacular pair of earrings, but [were] being offered separately, on account of their extreme rarity, power and presence.”

The Fancy Color Diamond Index for the first quarter of 2017 indicates pricing stability across most fancy color diamond categories, according to the Fancy Color Research Foundation (FCRF).

The main exception was blue fancy color diamonds, which saw a 1.9 percent price increase in the first 3 months of 2017, continuing the trend of 2016. During the same time, yellow and pink fancy color diamond prices remained largely unchanged. Overall, the Fancy Color Diamond Index for all shapes and sizes was up 0.2 percent for the period.

The strongest performing price categories during Q1 2017 were fancy intense and fancy vivid blue diamonds across all carat sizes.

On a year-on-year basis, when compared to Q1 2016, the Fancy Color Diamond Index is up 0.7 percent, with fancy blue and fancy pink diamonds up 5.7 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively, and fancy yellows down 2.5 percent.

As in Q4 2016, across all color segments fancy intense and fancy vivid stones demonstrated robust price increases, which were offset to some extent by price declines of color diamonds in the “Fancy” category.  .

The FCRF tracks pricing data for yellow, pink and blue fancy color diamonds in three key global trading centers – Hong Kong, New York and Tel Aviv.

FCRF Advisory Board chairman Eden Rachminov said, “Highly coveted fancy intense and vivid blues are challenging to find in the market, while interest and demand for these categories continue to grow. This trend is likely to continue well into 2017 as owners react to supply shortages with price hikes.”

A pair of fancy coloured earrings, offered as individual lots, will lead Sotheby’s spring sale of Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels, May 16 at the Mandarin Oriental, Geneva. Together the auction house says they make up the most valuable set of earrings ever sold at auction.

“The Apollo Blue,” a 14.54-carat fancy vivid blue diamond, will be presented with an estimate of A$51 – $68 million and “The Artemis Pink,” a 16-carat fancy intense pink diamond, has an estimate of A$17 – $24 million.

“The Apollo and Artemis diamonds will be the stars of our May sale in Geneva—by far the most important pair of earrings ever offered at auction,” said David Bennett, worldwide chairman of Sotheby’s International Jewellery Division.

“These exquisite coloured diamonds are enormously rare and each is a wonderful stone in its own right. Together, as a pair of earrings, they are breathtaking.”

They are named after Apollo and Artemis, a twin brother and sister among the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities.

THE APOLLO BLUE

Graded Fancy Vivid Blue by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and weighing an impressive 14.54 carats, the ‘Apollo Blue’ is the largest Internally Flawless Fancy Vivid Blue diamond ever to be offered at auction. It has been cut and polished into a beautiful unmodified pear-shape which flatters its exquisite and truly outstanding colour. The GIA has also determined that the ‘Apollo Blue’ is a Type IIb diamond – a group which contains less than one half of one per cent of all diamonds. The stone has had an auspicious start to its world tour, having already received many accolades on its exhibition in Hong Kong.

In recent times, the only mine to produce blue diamonds with any regularity is the Cullinan mine in South Africa. When in full production, less than 0.1 per cent of diamonds sourced showed any evidence of blue colour, according to the GIA. An infinitesimally small percentage of those is graded Fancy Vivid Blue.

THE ARTEMIS PINK

The ‘Artemis Pink’ stands as an exquisite and rare treasure in its own right, displaying an elegant and delicate Fancy Intense Pink hue. Weighing 16 carats, the stone has been carefully cut into a captivating pear shape, matching the Apollo Blue, which perfectly showcases the stone’s colour and clarity. The GIA has declared the ‘Artemis Pink’ to be a ‘Type IIa’ diamond, describing this category as ‘the most chemically pure type’ of diamonds, which ‘often have exceptional optical transparency’.

The occurrence of pink diamonds remains exceedingly rare: according to the GIA, of all diamonds submitted to their specialists each year, ‘no more than 3 per cent are classified as coloured diamonds; less than 5 per cent of those coloured diamonds are predominantly pink’. Thus, a Fancy Intense Pink stone of such rich colour and impressive size can only be described as phenomenally rare.

The coloured diamond is today’s ultimate possession; in a climate of intense connoisseurship, the ravishing coloured diamond is appreciated as the rarest of the rare, with a mystical, miraculous beauty that comes from the unique, emotive blend of the diamond’s unrivalled fiery brilliance with an exquisite palette of colours, the most appealing being cherry-blossom pink, and the rarest of all diamond colours, noble, contemplative blue. Apollo and Artemis – the divine diamond twins – are perfectly matched in size, cut and tonality.

Image Credit: Sotheby’s

Amongst the purest, chemically, of all diamonds, with an alluring limpidity, while the Apollo belongs to the most elite group comprising less than one-half of one percent of all diamonds, pure, with the presence of boron, the element that gives the diamond its blue colour. Diamonds of this quality, with this extraordinary depth and sophistication of colour, and of this size are unfathomably uncommon. 

The sheer luck of their very existence, the confluence of cosmic conditions that generated their miraculous formation process, billions of years ago, deep in the earth, is simply wondrous.

The Pink Star diamond has become the world’s most expensive gemstone, selling at auction today for an incredible US$71.2 million (A$94.3 million) including buyer’s premium.

At 59.60 carats, The Pink Star is the largest internally flawless, fancy vivid pink diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America. It’s more than twice the size of the 24.78-carat Graff Pink, which set the previous record price for a pink diamond when it sold for $46.2 million in 2010.

It breaks the record previously held by the Oppenheimer Blue diamond, which sold for $57.5 million at Christie’s in Geneva last May. It has also become the highest price item ever sold at auction in Asia.

“At a time of unprecedented demand for the finest in coloured diamonds, I am delighted to be bringing this magnificent stone back to the market,” said David Bennett, chairman of Sotheby’s jewellery division. “The extraordinary size of this 59.60-carat diamond, paired with its richness of colour, surpasses any known pink diamond recorded in history.”

The Pink Star surpassed the Graff Pink in November 2013 when Sotheby’s sold it to diamond cutter Isaac Wolf for a record $83.2 million. However, the stone was returned to Sotheby’s after Wolf and his investors defaulted on the payment.

Sotheby’s entered into a partnership agreement in June last year with Diacore and Mellen Diamonds, both New York-based diamond manufacturers, for shared ownership of the diamond. The Pink Star has been held in Sotheby’s inventory at a value of $72 million.

After bidding from three clients, the diamond was sold to jewellery retailer Chow Tai Fook, who was on the telephone to Sotheby’s Asia CEO Kevin Ching, for a hammer price of 490 million Hong Kong dollars (US$63 million). The sale total was 553 million Hong Kong dollars once the buyer’s premium was added.

The Pink Star was cut from a 132.5-carat rough diamond mined by De Beers in Africa in 1999. It took two years of meticulous cutting and polishing to hone it into its current oval shape.