The Largest Fancy Blue Diamond to Appear at Auction Could Fetch $8.5M

If you’re feeling blue, Christie’s has just the gem. The auction house is offering an extraordinarily large 31.62-carat blue diamond at the Magnificent Jewels sale in New York this June.

The aptly named Azure Blue is the biggest fancy blue diamond to come to auction, marking an incredible opportunity for collectors. Graded by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) as natural color, fancy blue, and potentially internally flawless, the pear-shaped stone is not only big, but beautiful. The color has “exceptional uniformity,” according to Christie’s, with a consistent, saturated blue hue showing across the diamond’s entire face. The stone itself is set in a platinum ring featuring a hidden halo of natural pink diamonds. 

Blue diamonds of this size, purity, and tone are, of course, increasingly scarce. The demand for top-quality colored gems is continuing to grow in the face of a rapidly dwindling supply. As such, these stones are commanding extremely high prices at auction.

The 14.62-carat Oppenheimer Blue, for example, hammered down for $57.6 million at Christie’s back in 2016, becoming the most expensive blue diamond ever sold. The 15.10-carat De Beers Blue very nearly surpassed that record, fetching $57.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2022. The Azure Blue is larger than both of them—double the size, actually—but is offered with a comparatively modest estimate of $6.5 million–$8.5 million. Why? Both of the other stones carry a fancy vivid grade, making them significantly more intense and rarer than straight fancy and hence more valuable. In fact, there is a 5.04-carat fancy vivid blue diamond in the same Christie’s sale, six times smaller than the Azure Blue but with the exact same pre-auction estimate, underscoring the weight of the vivid grading. But the Azure Blue has size on its side and is still one very impressive diamond.

“With its striking color, exceptional size, and elegant shape, the Azure Blue is a rare masterpiece of nature,” Claibourne Poindexter, head of jewelry, Americas, said in a statement. “As the largest fancy blue diamond ever offered at auction, Christie’s is honored to present this superb stone to a new generation of collectors this June.”

In addition to the Azure Blue, Christie’s is also offering up the largest fancy vivid blue-green diamond known to exist at the Magnificent Jewels sale in Geneva later this month. The stone, christened the Ocean Dream, weighs 5.5 carats and is fashioned in a striking triangular shape. Extracted from an 11.7-carat rough found in Central Africa in the 1990s, it has been dubbed one of the eight rarest diamonds in the world by the Smithsonian Institution. It is returning to auction for only the second time in its history and is expected to fetch between 7 million Swiss francs and 10 million Swiss francs.

The Magnificent Jewels auction in New York will take place on June 9, while the Geneva sale will be held on May 13.