Chicken Egg-Sized Diamond Could Get Over $30 Million

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Dec 2nd 2009 at 1:01AM

Bloomberg calls it a chicken-egg-sized diamond but the 507.6 carat rough stone found at Petra Diamonds' Cullinan mine in South Africa in September could earn some serious scratch. The diamond was part of a haul of four large stones found at the mine in September. The other stones, including a 168-carat stone sold for $6.28 million last week, have all been sold off. The other two stones sold for a total of $2.8 million. Now BMO Capital Markets is predicting a possible price of $31 million for biggest stone. The price is just an estimate.

Petra is still considering what to do with the stone. Stones of this size aren't found too often and the company is taking its time and pursuing all angles before any potential sale. The company's goal is obviously to get the biggest price for the stone but also to help make sure that the stone's legend lives on. Unlike many small diamonds, large stones tend to carry the name of their source along with them. It's hard to say what the final carat count will be. Rough stones can lose half their carat weight in polishing. Depending on the inclusions and other flaws that the diamond cutters will have to work around this could yield several substantial cut stones which could each go on to command their own multimillion price tags as they head down the supply chain.

Tags: cullinan mine, CullinanMine, petra diamonds, PetraDiamonds, rough diamonds, RoughDiamonds