Christie’s has sold an incredibly rare diamond, The Pink Legacy, for over $50 million, setting a record per-carat price for a pink diamond, according to the Associated Press. The 18.96-carat Pink Legacy diamond was on the auction block at Christie’s in Geneva on Tuesday.
The Pink Legacy is particularly special in that for a pink diamond of its size, it has no secondary coloring—no gray, orange, or purple hue, which is typical in a gemstone of that size. “To find a diamond of this size with this colour is pretty much unreal,” said Rahul Kadakia, Christie’s international head of jewellery, in a statement.
In general, pink diamonds have very little (if any) trace of nitrogen in them, and are among just 2% of all diamonds. In the Fancy Vivid Pink range, fewer than 10% of pink diamonds weigh more than one-fifth of a carat.
Diamond sales have been bouncing back in recent years, as other white and pink diamond auctions at Christie’s have shown, including the 2017 sale of the Pink Promise diamond that set a new record at the time. But this sale was particularly special. In the more than 250 years that auction auction house Christie’s has been in operation, only four Vivid Pink diamonds over four carats have ever appeared for sale.