The G-Color pear-shaped stone, with its platinum pendant suspended, has a total weight of 61.3 grams (2.2 oz) and dimensions of 5.4 cm x 3.1 cm (2.1 in x 1.2 in) – which makes it almost the same size. A medium-sized chicken egg, the Associated Press reported.
G-Color is not the highest grade, but it is fourth on the grade below the high grade D-Color diamond.
The Rock was acquired by an unspecified private buyer, with pre-auction estimates ranging between 19 million and 30 million francs.
Max Faust, Head of Jewelery at Christie’s Geneva, praised the successful sale in “uncharted territory” of a stone of its kind.
Also hammered on Wednesday was the “Red Cross” diamond, a 205.1-carat luxury yellow stone that fetched nearly 14.2 million francs, double the pre-sale estimate. Cut from a rough stone discovered from the Griqualand mines in South Africa in the early 1900s, the diamond was first auctioned off in 1918.
Fawcett testified to a “significant amount of interest” in Red Cross diamonds, saying that an unspecified “7-figure sum” of proceeds from the sale would be donated to an unspecified private buyer to the International Red Cross Movement, Geneva – an existing humanitarian aid group.
MI