The Pink Star, the largest known fancy vivid pink diamond in the world, Internally Flawless, weighing 59.60 carats, will go under hummer at Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels November auction.
Meticulously cut by Steinmetz Diamonds over a period of nearly two years – a process in which the 132.5 carat rough was cast in epoxy more than 50 times in order to create models upon which the design team could experiment with different cuts -it was transformed into this spectacular 59.60 carat, fancy vivid pink, internally flawless oval cut gem – the largest internally flawless or flawless, fancy vivid pink diamond that the Gemological Institute of American (GIA) has ever graded.
The diamond was first unveiled to the public in May 2003 as the ‘Steinmetz Pink’, and was modelled by Helena Christensen at a dedicated event thrown to coincide with the Monaco Grand Prix. Writing in the Financial Times on the 31 May 2003, Mike Duff described the diamond as “the rarest, finest, most precious stone the world has ever seen”. The stone was first sold in 2007 and was subsequently renamed “The Pink Star”. In the same article, Tom Moses, senior vice-president of the GIA, is quoted as saying: “it’s our experience that large polished pink diamonds – over ten carats – very rarely occur with an intense colour… The GIA Laboratory has been issuing grading reports for 50 years and this is the largest pink diamond with this depth of colour [vivid pink] that we have ever characterised”.
Of all the grades of pink which exist – light fancy pink, fancy pink, fancy intense pink, fancy deep pink and fancy vivid pink – ‘fancy vivid’ is the
highest possible colour grade for a pink diamond.
The current record price ever paid at auction for a diamond, or any gemstone, is the GRAFF PINK, a superb 24.76 carat, Fancy Intense Pink step-cut diamond, which sold at Sotheby’s Geneva in November 2010 for $46.16 million. Weighing in at 59.60 carats, this diamond is twice the size. The current record price per carat for a fancy vivid pink diamond ($2,155,332) was set by a 5.00 carat diamond, sold in Hong Kong in January 2009.
In the summer of 2003, this amazing gem was exhibited at ‘The Splendor of Diamonds’ exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Displayed in the Winston Gallery alongside the 45.52 carat blue
Hope Diamond, the exhibition featured seven of the world’s rarest and most extraordinary diamonds. Also on view for the first time in the United States was the 203.04 carat De Beers Millennium Star, one of the largest diamonds in the world; the Heart of Eternity blue diamond; the Moussaieff Red, the largest known red diamond in the world; the Harry Winston Pumpkin Diamond; the Allnatt, one of the world’s largest yellow diamonds at 101.29 carats; and the Ocean Dream, the world’s largest naturally occurring blue-green diamond.
