Museum to Buy World's Second Biggest Diamond?
February 18, 25
(IDEX Online) - The world's second biggest rough diamond - recovered at the Karowe mine in Botswana last August and weighing 2,488 carats - could remain forever unpolished, as a museum exhibit.
Canada-based Lucara said a number of museums had expressed an interest in acquiring the stone, named Motswedi.
"We've had discussions with three different museums across the globe who want to acquire the (Motswedi) stone," William Lamb, CEO of Lucara told the Financial Mail, a weekly magazine in South Africa. "They want it in the rough; they don't want to polish it."
He said that when they recovered another huge diamond, the 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona in 2015, a museum in Texas, USA, offered $42m for it. The stone was later sold to Graff Diamonds for $53m. Lamb said Motswedi wasn't as white as Lesedi La Rona and had inclusions that reflected as brown.
Technically the stone falls within the 10-year agreement with HB, the Antwerp-based diamond cutting and technology company that handles all of Lucara's +10.8-cts stones, but the Botswana government has the power to exempt "legacy stones" worth over $10m from that deal.
"I think the key message here is that Lucara will work in collaboration with the Government of Botswana to identify where the maximum value will be added for the stone both financially and as intangibles, for what this means to the people of Botswana," Lamb said last August.
Pic courtesy Lucara.