An exceptionally rare 19-carat pink diamond has fetched $50m (€44m) in Geneva, setting a new price-per-carat record for a stone of its kind, according to Christie's auction house.
Christie's international head of jewellery, Rahul Kadakia said the Pink Legacy was sold to American luxury brand Harry Winston, which belongs to the Swiss Swatch group.
The diamond used to belong to the Oppenheimer family, which for decades ran the De Beers diamond mining company.
The rectangular-cut diamond has been graded "fancy vivid" - the highest possible grade of colour intensity.
Christie's has noted that in the salesroom, fancy vivid pink diamonds over ten carats are "virtually unheard of" and that only four vivid pink diamonds or over ten carats have ever been offered at auction.
One of them, the nearly 15-carat Pink Promise, was sold last November at a Christie's auction in Hong Kong for $32.5m.
That amounts to $2.176m per carat, which remains the world auction record price per carat for any pink diamond.
The stone was discovered in a South African mine around a century ago and was probably cut in the 1920s and has not been altered since, Christie's said.
"Imagine a domino that you have cut the corners off of," Jean-Marc Lunel, an international jewellery specialist at Christie's, recently told AFP, pointing out that the cut is a "classical so-called emerald cut", which stands out from the typical, more rounded, multi-faceted cuts used today.
The classic rectangular cut is traditionally used for white stones, but is rare for pink diamonds.
Christie's said the Pink Legacy is "the largest and finest Fancy Vivid Pink diamond ever offered at auction by the company," calling the stone "incomparable."
"It is probably the most beautiful (specimen) ever presented at public auction," Mr Lunel said.
