Last week we reported on a 7.59-carat flawless blue diamond that’s expected to break the price-per-carat auction record at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in October. Now we’ve learned that another — even larger — ultra-rare fancy blue diamond is on the market. Turning heads at M.S. Rau Antiques in New Orleans is the 10.06-carat radiant-cut “Royal Blue.”
While Sotheby’s star attraction is expected to fetch $19 million, the M.S. Rau headliner is being offered at a comparatively modest $9.8 million.
The sky-colored Royal Blue is set in a beautiful platinum and rose gold ring, which is adorned with 96 vivid pink diamonds weighing 1.02 carats and 62 white diamonds weighing .97 carats.
The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) gave the Royal Blue a VVS1 clarity grade, which means it has very, very slight inclusions. This grade is one step down on the clarity scale from “IF,” or internally flawless. M.S. Rau is billing the Royal Blue as the largest natural fancy blue diamond on the market today.
On its website, M.S. Rau explained that blue diamonds are among the rarest and most desirable colored diamonds in the world today. Blue diamonds get their color from a rare natural phenomenon when a little bit of boron gets trapped in the carbon crystal structure. These gems often fetch 10 to 50 times more than comparable colorless diamonds. In recent history, less than 0.3% of all colored diamonds graded by the GIA were predominantly blue.
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