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A model shows off the 1109-carat ‘Lesedi La Rona’, rough
diamond during a media event at Sotheby’s in London Britain June 14, 2016. —
Reuters
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The world’s largest uncut diamond failed to sell at auction
in London yesterday after the bids fell short of the reserve price.
The Lesedi La Rona, a 1,109-carat, tennis ball-sized gem
found in Botswana, had been predicted to sell for over US$70 million (RM281
million).
But the Sotheby’s auctioneer failed to persuade bidders to
go above US$61 million for the jewel, which was discovered in 2015 by the
Lucara Diamond Corp.
“Though widely admired in the months preceding this
evening’s auction, and despite having seen bidding in the salesroom, the Lesedi
la Rona failed to reach its reserve price and consequently did not find a buyer
tonight,” Sotheby’s said in a later statement.
Sotheby’s chairman of jewellery David Bennett had called the
diamond “the find of a lifetime.”
“No rough even remotely of this scale has ever been offered
before at public auction,” Bennett said ahead of the auction.
Precious stones have been fetching ever-higher prices at
auction lately, as the world’s ultra-rich invest in hard assets as a safeguard
against stock market volatility.
Reacting to the failed sale, Tobias Kormind of 77 Diamonds
online retailer said the bullish gem market “may have reached a tipping point
and demand for large rare stones might just be saturated”.
Alternatively, he said, “the market instability with Brexit
may have just caused this to be a case of bad luck or bad timing.”
Lesedi La Rona means “our light” in Botswana’s Tswana
language. It could be cut into smaller gems for jewellery or left whole in a
private collection.
On the same day as the stone was discovered, another
830-carat diamond was found in Botswana, the third-largest in the world,
William Lamb, Lucara’s president and chief executive, told AFP.
The record for the biggest diamond in the world is still
held by the “Cullinan Diamond”, a legendary gem found in South Africa in 1905
boasting 3,016.75 carats.
The Cullinan Diamond was cut into nine diamonds for the
British crown jewels.
They include the Cullinan I in the Queen’s Sceptre and the
Cullinan II, which is lodged in the crown that the British monarch wears to the
opening of parliament.
A blue diamond from the same South African mine sold for
over £25 million (RM134 million) in New York this month.
— AFP
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