A 14.83-carat purple pink diamond sold at auction in Geneva for a record $26.6 million Wednesday, Sotheby's auction house announced.
It was the most fetched at auction for a diamond of its grade -- fancy vivid purple-pink. Sotheby's said it expected the gem to sell for between $23 million and $38 million.
The telephone buyer of the gem chose to remain anonymous.
The diamond was named The Spirit of the Rose and was cut from a rough diamond called Nijinsky after the Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. It was one of three stones unearthed by mining company Alrosa named after Russian ballets.
The diamond was discovered in 2017 in Yakutia in northeast Russia.
"The Spirit of the Rose is the ideal name for a stone which reflects beauty and mystery; a diamond for which the magnificence and the grandeur of Russia were fully unveiled by the cutter who brought out its inner and magical beauty," Sotheby's said in its catalog notes for the diamond.
Pink diamonds are extraordinarily rare. About 80% of the world's pink diamonds come from the Argyle mine in Western Australia -- and only about 0.1% of the mine's annual 20 million carats in output is pink.
The current record auction price for a pink diamond of any grade is $71.2 million for a 59.6-carat oval mixed-cut fancy vivid pink diamond.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
