An out-of-this-world — actually — black diamond will go to the very best bidder at Sotheby’s subsequent month.
The record-breaking, 555.55-carat gemstone, dubbed “The Enigma,” was ranked among the many largest and hardest diamonds on the planet, and it’s thought to have dropped right here thousands and thousands of years in the past from outer house, in keeping with the enduring public sale home’s professional gemologists.
Black diamonds like this one, additionally referred to as carbonados, are fashioned out of a meteoric influence to Earth, solid out of the blast or deriving from the asteroid itself, Sotheby’s shared in a statement.
The 1-billion-year-old diamond is anticipated to fetch at the very least $6.8 million when it hits the net block, the place it will likely be up for bidding from Feb. 3 to Feb. 9. Sotheby’s will settle for cryptocurrency as cost — in addition to chilly exhausting money.
The Home of Gübelin in Switzerland and the Gemological Institute of America each have declared it the biggest identified of its form, and it was first listed by Guinness World Data in 2006.
In the meantime, this 2022 publicity push marks the primary time the diamond has ever been proven publicly, Sotheby’s stated. Following an unveiling on the Dubai Diamond Change this week, the Enigma will journey to Los Angeles from Jan. 24 to Jan. 26 earlier than touchdown on the London public sale home in February.
In line with its numeric theme, the 555.55-carat jewel was additionally reduce with 55 aspects, a technical feat for one of many hardest diamonds in existence, in keeping with Sotheby’s.
“The form of the diamond relies on the Center Jap palm image of the Khamsa, which stands for energy and … safety,” Sophie Stevens, a jewellery specialist at Sotheby’s Dubai, told the Associated Press. Khamsa in Arabic means 5, “so there’s a pleasant theme of the quantity 5 working all through the diamond.”
“ ‘The Enigma’ is a marvel of rarity and measurement, and its brilliance and excessive polish are a testomony to the fragile and extremely expert enterprise of diamond reducing,” stated Nikita Binani, jewellery specialist and head of sale at Sotheby’s London.
The diamond had beforehand belonged to an nameless proprietor, stated Binani, although it’s not precisely clear the place or the way it got here into existence.
“Its sale represents a once-in-a-lifetime alternative to accumulate one of many rarest, billion-year-old cosmic wonders identified to humankind,” she stated.
