Rarest of the Rare
November 21, 24
When was the last time you saw a red diamond? If the answer is "never," then you're not alone.
Ronald Winston, son of legendary Harry Winston, was quoted as saying: "My father never saw a red diamond and he saw everything." Don't underestimate the rarity of red diamonds.
Multiple sources say there could be as few as 30 true gem-quality red diamonds in the world. Between 1957 and 1987, GIA didn't grade a single diamond with a pure red color. Even now it has graded so few red diamonds it isn't able to classify them by color intensity or saturation as it does with pinks, blues, yellows and other colors. They are simply "fancy red".
One such fancy red made an appearance last week, as a highlight of Sotheby's Geneva Magnificent Jewels Sale. The 1.44-carat stone sold for just over $1m, or $754,650 per carat.
And another will be offered for sale next month, also by Sotheby's, this time in New York. It's a 0.71 carat stone, I1 clarity, estimate $800,000 to $1.8m.
Admittedly the price paid for the gem last week was on the low side. The estimate was $1m to $2m.
But even among the rarest color diamonds, discerning buyers want the best. This particular gem was only I2 clarity.
"Red diamonds with low clarity can easily command very high prices if the blemishes are not highly visible to the naked eye, as low clarity is considered typical for this color family," said the Fancy Color Research Foundation in its pre-auction analysis of the gem.
"In the case of this 1.44-carat diamond, numerous inclusions are quite pronounced, including a reflective feather under the table, which notably catches the eye."
So maybe not the greatest, or priciest of red diamonds, but still one of the rarest items on our planet.
The total weight of diamonds ever recovered in the world, from ancient times until today, is estimated at 6bn carats. The red diamonds that are known to exist are mostly under a carat in weight, equivalent to something like one in every 200m carats recovered.
A good number of those - including the 1.44-ct that sold last week and the 0.71-carat being sold next month - are from the iconic Argyle mine, in Australia. It produced just over 20 carats in its lifetime, from December 1985 until its closure in November 2020.
Argyle supplied over 90 per cent of the world's pink diamonds, so it's no surprise that it was also the primary source of reds. Red diamonds are basically pinks, but with color saturation levels that exceed the pinkest of pink diamonds - fancy vivid pink and fancy deep pink.
The pink or red color doesn't come from the presence of trace elements such as, for example, nitrogen or boron, as with yellow or blue diamonds. It's thought to be the result of the slow and very gradual collision of plate tectonics, over millions of years, that displaces some of the carbon atoms and affects transmission of certain wavelengths of light.
The largest red diamond ever is the Moussaieff Red, a 5.11-carat polished gem that takes its name from Shlomo Moussaieff, a renowned Israeli jeweler and antiquities collector. He bought it in 2001 for an estimated $8m.
It was cut from a 13.9-carat rough stone found by a farmer at an alluvial deposit in western Minas Gerais, Brazil.
But it was The Hancock Red, a far smaller diamond at just 0.95 carats, that made red diamonds famous.
Warren Hancock, a rancher and diamond collector from Montana, USA, reportedly bought it in Brazil for $13,500 in 1956 at a time when fancy color diamonds really weren't a thing.
It sold at Christie's New York in 1987, a few years after his death for $880,000, which is 65 times what he paid. It was, at the time, the highest price per carat ($926,000) ever paid for any gemstone.
Have a fabulous weekend.