2 hrs 27 mins ago
HONG KONG (AFP) – A rare 5.16-carat blue diamond is to be auctioned in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
Auction house Sotheby's said the pear-shaped gem from a private collector was expected to fetch up to US$5.9 million at the sale.
The stone is the first blue diamond from the celebrated De Beers Millennium Jewels Collection to appear at auction.
The collection, displayed in London's Millennium Dome in 2000, consists of 11 high-quality blue diamonds from the Premier Diamond Mine of Transvaal, South Africa. It was reported that the mine could produce only one blue diamond of such high calibre each year.
Sotheby's said gem sales in Hong Kong were on the rise -- the city has overtaken New York to become the company's second biggest market after Geneva.
Terry Chu, deputy head of Sotheby's jewellery department for China and Southeast Asia, said diamonds were particularly appealing to new Asian buyers because of their stable prices and assured quality.
"There have been a lot of new diamond buyers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and elsewhere in the region," Chu told AFP.
"I think after the financial crisis, the Asian buyers realised that the prices of diamond are relatively stable compared to other types of auction items," she said.
In December, a five-carat chickpea-sized vivid pink gem set a per-carat world record price for a diamond when it fetched $10.8 million at an auction in Hong Kong.
The price beat the $10.5 million paid by a Hong Kong property tycoon for a seven-carat blue diamond in Geneva in May last year.
According to Sotheby's Hong Kong has become the world's third largest auction hub after New York and London, spurred by China's growing wealth and increasing taste for fine art.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100407/wl ... YtY2FyYQ--
mmmm diamonds
