Image credit: Sotheby's
A private collector from Japan won the bid in an unprecedented single-lot live auction and named it “Maiko Star” after his second daughter. The same collector earlier snapped up the 88.22-carat “Manami Star” at Sotheby’s in April 2019, according to the auction house. The exceptional 102.39-carat D-colour flawless oval diamond sold for around US$15.7 mn at a Sotheby’s sale – the first world-class diamond ever to be auctioned without reserve.
Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia, commented, “This extraordinary gem needed no help from a pre-sale estimate or reserve to reach its rightful price – just the instinctive desire of collectors to own one of the earth’s greatest treasures.”
The diamond belongs to the rare subgroup comprising less than 2 per cent of all gem diamonds, known as Type IIA. Diamonds in this group are the most chemically pure type and often have exceptional optical transparency.
Offered without reserve – a first at auction for such a significant lot – the diamond attracted huge buyer interest, with bids quickly escalating around $0.13 mn to well over around $13 million. Some of those bids were also placed online, the highest of which was around $10.97 mn, the highest value bid ever placed on a jewel online.
The flawless oval diamond came from a 271-carat rough discovered at the Victor Mine in Ontario, Canada in 2018. Till date only eight D-colour internally flawless or flawless white diamonds of over 100 carats were ever sold at auction.
Aruna Gaitonde, Editor in Chief of the Asian Bureau, Rough&Polished
