(PRESS RELEASE) Sotheby’s has sold the largest cut diamond – the Enigma, a 555.55 carat black diamond, for a hammer price of £3.2 million excluding buyer’s premium. The diamond’s origins remain an unsolved mystery. Sotheby’s has called the stone ‘a treasure from interstellar space’ and an academic is convinced of the stone’s ‘non-Earth genesis’.
Tobias Kormind is the managing director of Europe’s largest online jeweler, the Mayfair headquartered 77 Diamonds says: “The Enigma’s price did not quite reach intergalactic levels. But what cannot be denied is that the Enigma is a diamond with unparalleled bragging rights. It’s the ultimate party trick – just imagine revealing to your guests you are the owner of the world’s largest cut diamond.
The size, shape and source of the Enigma diamond make it groundbreaking and amazing. While many newly minted wealthy individuals currently have their sights set on the latest NFT fad, the result of this auction has confirmed the allure of investing in a very real, tangible, one-of-a-kind, extraordinary alternative asset, especially at a time of high inflation which tends to bode well for real assets, and against a backdrop of buoyant equity markets. Meanwhile, demand for rare, high quality, black diamonds is on the up. British TV personality and musician Myleene Klass chose a large, dramatic black diamond for her engagement ring last year.
Apart from being the largest cut diamond in the world, the Enigma is remarkably unusual for additional reasons. Firstly, most diamonds are cut into one of 10 popular shapes but the Enigma’s form resembles a hand, admittedly quite likely determined from the original rough diamond to preserve as much of its weight as possible. The legendary Cullinan diamond, which sits in the Queen’s scepter in the Tower of London, is also a rather unusual shape and (at 530.4 carats) almost as large as the Enigma, although unlike the Enigma, it is a gem quality diamond. Secondly, being a carbonado, the Enigma is unchartered waters for Sotheby’s. Carbonados are not normally used in jewelry or sold at auction. They are relatively inexpensive and mainly used in industrial drilling, because they are harder to fracture than ordinary diamonds thanks to their abundant interlocking micro crystals. In fact the largest carbonado is the largest diamond ever discovered – the Sergio, a 3167 carat rough diamond that was eventually broken up and used in industrial drilling in 1895.”