(New York) A giant ruby of 55.22 carats, dubbed Estrela de Fura, the largest ever at auction, was sold Thursday in New York for 34.8 million dollars, a record for this stone, announced the Sotheby’s company.
Cut and shaped from a 101-carat rough stone discovered in September at a mine in Montepeuz, Mozambique, operated by the company Fura Gems, the jewel was the star of this jewelry sale which included 100 lots.
Offered at a starting price of $21 million, it was sold for $30 million, or $34.8 million with fees and commissions, to an anonymous telephone buyer.
A Sotheby’s spokeswoman told AFP that the buyer was a “private collector from the Middle East”, without further details.
The previous record belonged to a 25.59-carat Burmese ruby, sold for $30.33 million including fees by Sotheby’s in Geneva in 2015.
The marketing of this extremely rare jewel, exhibited in Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Geneva, Dubai and New York, was an event for the world of jewelry.
“It is a true wonder of nature. Any ruby that comes out of the ground and ends up exceeding five carats as a polished ruby is something of a rarity. A 10 carat ruby is very rare. 20 carats is almost unheard of. A ruby over 50 carats is once in a lifetime,” Sotheby’s head of jewelry for the Americas, Quig Bruning, told AFP.
During the same auction session, “The Eternal Pink”, a rare pink diamond of 10.57 carats, from the exploitation of a mine in Botswana, was sold for the same price of 34.8 million dollars , a record per carat ($3.29 million) for a stone of this color.
The current all-time high for the sale price of a pink diamond was reached in Hong Kong in 2017, when the “Pink Star” (59.60 carats) was purchased for $71.2 million.
