For more than half a century, one of the world’s great pink diamonds lay out of sight in a private collection. When it finally reappeared, it set a record that stunned the jewelry world.
A stone from Harry Winston
The story begins with Harry Winston, who sold the diamond to a private collector around sixty years before it came back to market. For the decades that followed, it was rarely seen and almost never discussed: the kind of jewel that becomes a rumor among dealers.
Geneva, November 2010
When Sotheby’s offered the 24.78-carat fancy intense pink diamond in Geneva, the room understood what it was seeing. Pink diamonds of this size and saturation are vanishingly rare, and this one was a Type IIa stone, the chemically purest category of diamond, prized for its exceptional transparency.
The hammer fell at roughly $46 million, then a world auction record for any jewel. The buyer was the London jeweler Laurence Graff, who gave the stone his own name.
Every fraction of a carat removed is value lost. Graff cut it anyway.
A second life on the cutting wheel
Graff did something that made purists hold their breath: he had the diamond recut. It was a gamble. But the gamble paid off. The stone emerged at 23.88 carats, upgraded to Fancy Vivid pink and graded internally flawless, a combination almost unheard of in a pink diamond of this size.
Why it matters
The Graff Pink marked a turning point. It showed that the very finest colored diamonds could command prices once reserved for masterpieces of painting, and it opened a decade in which pink diamonds became the ultimate trophy of the auction room.
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