Exceptional, a 4.90-carat green heart-shaped diamond could break all records at the Sotheby’s auction on April 5th, in Hong Kong.

For ten years now, there has been an rampant craze for colored diamonds. Christie’s and Sotheby’s clock up the records with a 14.82-carat orange diamond for over 26 million dollars, the 59.60-carat “Pink Star” for $ 83 million and the “Blue Moon”, an extremely rare “fancy vivid” blue that reached 48.46 million dollars or 4 million dollars per carat. The record for a green diamond dates back to 2009 when one at 2.52 carats was auctioned for 3.07 million dollars (EUR 2.05 million). Astounding! “We are experiencing the same phenomenon for all beautiful stones, like the characteristic velvety blue sapphires from Kashmir or rubies ​​extracted from the legendary Mogok mine“, says one jeweler.

The boom for colored diamonds is due to an ever-increasing demand, particularly from emerging countries such as China, combined with an increasingly restricted offer. “Exceptional stones are becoming scarce because the mines are exhausted and do not discover any new ones“, says dealer, Matthew Tarin. The yellow ones are 10,000 times rarer than white. The pinks come from only one mine, the Argyle in Australia where we also find a few red diamonds, the rarest of them all. There are no more than thirty worldwide. Of these miracles of nature, one at 1.56 carats was sold for over 2 million, or 6 million dollars per gram.

Such jewelers as Graff, Harry Winston, Cartier or Tiffany & Co. have built their reputation on colored diamonds. The latter made one of the largest ever discovered, a yellow, its emblem. The jeweler cut it into a 128-carat cushion and mounted it onto a brooch, which is generally on display in its landmark New York store. Both Cartier and Harry Winston were owners of the priceless “Hope” diamond (45.42 carats), which reputedly adorned Louis XIV’s Order of the Golden Fleece pendant. Its mysterious origins resound with the legend that it would always bring bad luck to its owners.