Rare 15.1-carat blue diamond fetches nearly $57.5M at auction

The winner of the massive stone, dubbed the De Beers Cullinan Blue, comes away with the “largest vivid blue diamond ever to appear at auction,” Sotheby’s said in a news release. The diamond, which was “cut from an exceptional rough stone” discovered last year in South Africa’s Cullinan Mine, also is “the largest internally flawless step-cut vivid blue diamond” graded by the Gemological Institute of America, the release said.

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“Blue diamonds of any kind are rare on the market, but this is the rarest of the rare; nothing of remotely similar caliber has appeared at auction in recent years,” Sotheby’s Asia Chairman Patti Wong said in a statement earlier this year. “Hundreds of millions of years in the making, this extraordinary blue diamond is surely one of nature’s finest creations.”

Although the diamond ended up fetching $9.47 million more than experts had anticipated, its final price failed to surpass the world record-setting $57.54 million paid for the 14.62-carat Oppenheimer Blue in 2016, according to CNN.