rare diamonds

The History Behind The Creation Of The Millennium Jewel Collection

Filed under: Jewelry

I wrote earlier this month about the blue diamond up for sale at Sotheby's in Hong Kong on April 7th. In advance of the sale DeBeers contacted me with a little more info on the blue diamonds including this image of the full set of the Millennium Jewel Collection, a collection of 12 blockbuster stones that includes the De Beers Millennium Star and 11 exceptional and rare blue diamonds originally gathered as part of the Millennium celebrations in the London Millennium Dome. The blue stone in the auction is the first diamond to come up for sale since going into private collection.

How did the collection come to be? Andrew Coxon, President of the De Beers Institute of Diamonds with over 40 years experience with the De Beers Group, is one of the world's leading experts on diamonds and was the head of diamond buying at De Beers Group throughout the 1990s. He was the visionary behind the collection and personally selected each blue rough diamond for its potential beauty and even saturation of color. The stones had been collected by De Beers from their own mines over a period of over twenty years. After selection the two-year cutting and polishing process began.

Tags: auction, blue diamonds, debeers, diamond, rare diamonds

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Evening Star Crowns Important Collector's Jewelry Sale

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Jewelry, Auctions

You have to be a very important collector to get your own sale at Christie's. Most collections are amassed into larger sales but a single owner collection of 10 jewels is set for December 10, is set for the same day as the New York Jewels sale at Christie's New York. This smaller sale features some big stones. The most important is the "Evening Star" diamond, a pear-shaped, 39-carat, D-color diamond mounted in a platinum pendant. This stone is a type IIa diamond the type which was found in India's famous ancient Golconda mines. It is certified to be VVS1 clarity and is accompanied by a working diagram indicating that the clarity may be potentially internally flawless.

The Evening Star alone is estimated at $3.6 million to $5.5 million. The name comes from the owner's habit of wearing the stone to evening galas. She wore the stone suspended from a diamond necklace that consisted of 68 graduated pear-shaped diamonds. That necklace is also for sale with an estimated value of $400,000 to $600,000. And to complete the parure you can pick up the matching pair of diamond ear pendants with two pear-shaped, D-color diamonds of 10.21 and 10.51 carats. The earrings which are also type IIa stones are estimated to bring in $1.7 million to $2.5 million.

Other diamond pieces in the sale include a diamond bracelet by Van Cleef and Arpels and a 36.78-carat, rectangular-cut, D-color, internally flawless diamond ring mounted in platinum with an estimated value of between $2.75 million and $3.5 million. If diamonds aren't your favorite you can bid on an a rare color-change alexandrite ring. The 3.6 carat stone show teal in daylight and purple in incandescent light.

[via National Jeweler]

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Tags: alexandrite, evening star diamond, EveningStarDiamond, golconda diamonds, GolcondaDiamonds, jewelry, rare diamonds, RareDiamonds, type iia diamond, TypeIiaDiamond