Record-breaking purple-pink diamond sells for £20.7m!
- Published
This is the Sakura Diamond, a fancy purple-pink diamond ring, which has just set a world auction record price for a diamond with this rare colour combination. It sold for more that £20.7 million at auction in Hong Kong. Diamonds are weighed in units called carats, and most pink diamonds are smaller than 10 carats. This however weighs 15.81-carats!
The previous price record for a purple-pink diamond was this one named the Spirit of the Rose. Its buyer paid £20.1million for it in November 2018! It weighed in at 14.8-carats. It was discovered in Russia in 2017 and the size of it along with its looks helped it fetch a pretty price!
This 102.39 Carat Oval Diamond, sold for £12.1 million in October 2020 and is the first world-class diamond ever to be auctioned without reserve - that means without a minimum price that the seller was happy to accept for it. It's called Victor 10239 and was described to be the size of a lollipop. It's certainly more than my pocket money could afford!
In June 2020, a miner found the biggest tanzanite gemstones in history. He became very rich very fast after he sold the huge rocks for £2.4 million to the government in Tanzania, Africa. They weighed 15kg, smashing the previous record of 3.3kg. Tanzanite is only found in northern Tanzania and is used to make ornaments. The person who found the rocks, Saniniu Laizer, found another gem in August 2020 that weighed 6.3kg!
The CTF Pink Star diamond holds the title for most expensive diamond sold at auction - it sold for a huge £52 million. Sotheby's David Bennett says the diamond belongs in "the ranks of the earth's greatest natural treasures". It sold in November 2018.
This is the Sun Drop diamond and it sold for £7 million in 2011. It's 100 times heavier than most diamonds you see in rings and necklaces. It's also extremely rare for a diamond to have such a strong colour. This diamond was loaned to the Natural History Museum in London and Alan Hart, the Museum's minerals curator, said: "I've never seen a stone such as this. A one carat diamond is what most people are familiar with, and are really pleased to own. You can see how exceptional this diamond is."
These are the world's first zero-carbon diamonds. Environmentalist Dale Vince has developed eco-friendly diamonds by sucking carbon out of the air. They've called the process of making them "sky mining", pulling out of the atmosphere, with wind and sun providing the energy. The process also reuses collected rain water.
- Published22 April 2015
- Published30 October 2020
