March 21, 2017: Auction house Sotheby’s has announced that The Pink Star, a great natural treasures, will lead its sales of magnificent jewels and jadeite in Hong Kong on April 4, 2017. Estimated in excess of US$60 million / HK$468 million, this 59.60-carat oval mixed-cut pink diamond is the largest Internally Flawless Fancy Vivid Pink diamond that the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has ever graded.
The Pink Star has received the highest colour and clarity grades from the GIA for pink diamonds and has been found to be part of the rare subgroup comprising less than 2% of all gem diamonds – known as Type IIa: stones in this group are chemically the purest of all diamond crystals and often have extraordinary optical transparency. Mined by De Beers in Africa in 1999, the 132.5-carat rough diamond was meticulously cut and polished over a period of two years and transformed into this gemstone.
At 59.60 carats, The Pink Star is more than twice the size of the ‘Graff Pink’ – the 24.78-carat Fancy Intense Pink diamond which currently holds the world auction record for any pink diamond. Sold at Sotheby’s Geneva in 2010, for US$46.2 million, the Graff Pink also marked an auction record for any diamond or gemstone at the time.
