Wrong Kind of Diamond Story

It was an incredible story.

An elderly woman walked into an auction house in the north of England clutching a bag of low-value costume jewelry and what looked like a very large CZ.

She'd picked it out from bric-a-brac at a garage sale years earlier. She stuck it in a drawer, thought nothing of it and threw it in the trash during a clear-out, before a neighbor suggested it might be valuable.

The auctioneer also thought nothing of it. He left it sitting on his desk for a few days until he decided he'd check it out and send it to HRD Antwerp, just to be sure.

He discovered, to his astonishment, that it wasn't cubic zirconia after all. It was a genuine diamond, weighing 34.19 carats, graded as H / VS1, and worth around $2.5m.

The only problem with the story is that it was entirely made up by the auctioneer. None of what you've just read ever happened.

The real back story was far less remarkable. The auction house in question - Featonby's, in North Shields - was selling a diamond on behalf of a dealer in Antwerp. That's it.

But it seems auctioneer Mark Lane thought a good story would attract more interest. It certainly did.

Local and national newspapers picked it up back in October 2021, as did the BBC, Robb Report, The Indian Express and more.

The woman in question was never identified for one very good reason. She didn't exist.

But there's another, very bizarre chapter to this story, which proves the law of unintended consequences is alive and well.

One newspaper reader became convinced, for reasons of his own, that the (non-existent) woman who owned the diamond was actually his estranged wife.

He was so convinced that he went to court, alleging she'd cheated him out of his half share of the diamond.

And that's when the whole story began to unravel. Under pressure, the auctioneer was forced to admit it had all been a fabrication.

There was no such woman, so there was no way it could be the estranged wife.

Mark Lane, appearing earlier this month at Derby Family Court, admitted it had all been a PR stunt to help save his family's 100-year-old business.

"There is no circumstantial evidence that supports what the husband says in relation to the diamond ever being in the wife's hands," concluded Judge Deborah Dinan-Hayard, according to The Telegraph newspaper.

"There is no evidence whatsoever in support of the husband's contention that this £2m diamond or its proceeds belong to the wife."

The real owners of the diamond, unnamed dealers in Antwerp, promptly pulled the stone from sale.

"When they saw their diamond splashed all over the British newspapers, they wanted to know what was going on and wanted the diamond back," the judge said.

Every diamond tells a story. Every diamond dealer knows that. The moral of the story, though, is to make sure the story is true.