A very large and rare blue diamond, one of the largest and rarest in the world in fact, just sold for a whopping heap of money at the Christie's Geneva auction. Called the "The Oppenheimer Blue," it fetched an astounding $57.5 million at auction, sold to a yet to be disclosed private buyer.
The blue diamond is mounted on a platinum ring with adjacent trapeze-shaped diamonds on either side. It measures 14.62 carats Fancy Vivid and is considered by experts to be the highest quality blue diamond in the world.
Fancy Vivid is a description for the tonality and medium contrast in saturation of color in blue diamonds.
The name of this diamond comes from its original owner, Sir Philip Oppenheimer, who was a prominent diamond dealer and who hailed from the astute De Beers family.
Previously, the largest blue diamond sold on record was the "Blue Moon of Josephine," which measured at 12.03 carats and fetched $48.4 million at auction.
A meager 1% of all blue diamonds garner the coveted Fancy Vivid rating, and are thought to only be just 0.00001% of all diamonds mined.
The only thing rarer than a blue diamond such as this are red diamonds, of which under 100 have been found.
When a sale of this size does occur, it has to make you stop and wonder what the buyer does for a living and how they plan to secure such an exorbitantly expensive stone.
You'd think that a home would need to have one of the tightest security systems in the world, akin to a large museum, in order to adequately protect the stone. One can only even imagine the annual costs for posted security guards to protect such treasures. Then there's the insurance on it, if you can find it, which has to also cost a pretty penny
Then again, if you have pockets that are deep enough to bid such a lavish price on a diamond without flinching, then the last thought that goes through your mind is the cost of actual ownership. If only we could all be so lucky.