Hot off of the AP news wire. The most expensive jewel ever sold, was auctioned off on April 4th, 2017, fetching $71.2 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong auction house. The Pink Star diamond, at 59.6 carats, was snatched up by Hong Kong-based Billionaire businessman Henry Cheng Kar-Shun, chairman of Hong Kong jeweller Chow Tai Fook, after a fiery five-minute bidding war.

the Pink Star Diamond photo: Sotheby’s

According to Sotheby’s, the Pink Star diamond was the largest internally flawless, fancy vivid pink diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America. It received the highest colour and clarity grades possible for a pink diamond.

The gem was previously auctioned off in 2014 to bid winner Isaac Wolf, a diamond cutter, for $93 million at a Sotheby’s auction in Geneva. However, the diamond was reclaimed by the auction house after Wolf failed to pay for it. The Chow Tai Fook renamed the amazing stone the  CTF Pink Star after it purchased the diamond, in honour of the late father of the jewellery retailer’s current chairman. Reuters

A 132.5 carat rough diamond was mined in Botswana, Africa, by De Beers in 1999. It took two years of work cutting and polishing the gem to transform it into what is now the Pink Star Diamond. The diamond was determined to be part of an extremely rare group known as IIa, diamonds which are the purest and most transparent, comprising less than two percent of all gems.

in 2010 the 24.79 carats Graff Pink,  sold for $46.2 million, holding the previous world record for a pink diamond. The Pink Star diamond has as well broken the world price record for all diamonds, sold, previously held by the Oppenheimer Blue diamond, auctioned at a Christie’s in May for $58 million.

Check out our lovely slightly more modest pink diamonds today.

heading photo: Sotheby’s