The 10 most expensive pieces of jewellery ever sold at auction

Almost every record on this list is a single coloured stone, usually mounted as a ring, and almost every one was bought by two or three people who already owned something similar and wanted this one more. That is a small market behaving exactly like a large one. The mechanics are the same as an evening in a hotel ballroom: scarcity, a story, and one bidder who will not sit down.

Each figure is the price reported at the time of the sale, with the house and the date. Prices at this level include the buyer's premium, so where the hammer is known it is given too. Everything is ranked in US dollars so the figures can be compared, with the saleroom currency in brackets.

1. The CTF Pink Star, 59.60 carats — $71.2 million

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 4 April 2017, bought by Chow Tai Fook, and still the record for any jewel at auction. The larger story is what happened first. In November 2013 the same stone had sold in Geneva for CHF 76,325,000, about 83 million dollars including fees, an apparent world record. The buyer never paid. Sotheby's took the diamond back onto its own books and it returned to the block three and a half years later at a lower number. A bid is only a price once the money arrives.

2. The Williamson Pink Star, 11.15 carats — $57.7 million

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 7 October 2022. A cushion-shaped internally flawless fancy vivid pink from Tanzania, cut from 32.32 carats of rough. The hammer was about 49.9 million dollars; the rest was the premium, roughly a sixth of what the buyer wrote out. It set a record price per carat for any diamond.

3. The Oppenheimer Blue, 14.62 carats — $50.6 million (CHF 56,830,000)

Christie's Geneva, 18 May 2016. An emerald-cut fancy vivid blue named after Philip Oppenheimer, whose family ran De Beers, and the largest vivid blue ever graded by the GIA to come to auction. Two telephone bidders fought it out and the winner has never been named. It was the most expensive jewel ever sold until the Pink Star came back eleven months later.

4. The Winston Pink Legacy, 18.96 carats — $50 million (CHF 50,375,000)

Christie's Geneva, 13 November 2018. Mined in South Africa around 1918, once owned by the Oppenheimer family, and probably not touched since it was cut in 1920. It was bought by Harry Winston, which is to say by a jeweller rather than a collector, and at roughly 2.6 million dollars a carat it set a record for a pink diamond. A trade buyer paying the top price is a signal worth reading.

5. The Blue Moon of Josephine, 12.03 carats — $48.4 million

Sotheby's Geneva, 11 November 2015, hammered at CHF 43.2 million before fees. Found at the Cullinan mine in South Africa in January 2014, and internally flawless. The Hong Kong businessman Joseph Lau bought it for his seven-year-old daughter and renamed it after her. He appears twice more below.

6. The Graff Pink, 24.78 carats — $46 million

Sotheby's Geneva, 16 November 2010, or 29 million pounds. Harry Winston had sold the stone in the 1950s to a private collector who kept it, unnamed, for over fifty years. The estimate was 27 to 38 million dollars. Laurence Graff bought it, gave it his own name, and held the record for a single jewel for the next three years.

7. The Princie Diamond, 34.65 carats — $39.3 million

Christie's New York, 16 April 2013. A Golconda pink found in India about three hundred years ago, first recorded in the collection of the Nizams of Hyderabad, and sold at Sotheby's in 1960 for 46,000 pounds. Van Cleef and Arpels named it after the fourteen-year-old son of the Maharanee of Baroda. It was expected to make more than 45 million and did not, which is a reminder that estimates fail in both directions.

8. The Zoe Diamond, 9.75 carats — $32.6 million

Sotheby's New York, November 2014. A fancy vivid blue from the collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon, sold with the rest of her estate, and at more than three million dollars a carat a record per carat for any blue at the time. The buyer was Joseph Lau again, naming it for another daughter. Provenance and a name did as much work here as the carat weight.

9. The Fortune Pink, 18.18 carats — $28.8 million (CHF 28.4 million)

Christie's Geneva, November 2022. A pear-shaped fancy vivid pink, and the largest of its shape and grade to reach auction. It sold in the same season as the Williamson Pink Star, which tells you something about how quickly one record sale pulls the next consignment out of a safe.

10. The Sweet Josephine, 16.08 carats — $28.5 million

Christie's Geneva, November 2015, a record for a cushion-shaped vivid pink. Joseph Lau bought it the day before he bought the Blue Moon at a rival house across the same week of sales. Two auction houses, two evenings, one buyer, and roughly 77 million dollars. Auction weeks are built around exactly that behaviour.

The one just outside

The Wittelsbach Diamond, 35.56 carats of deep blue that sat on the Bavarian crown until 1918, made 16.4 million pounds at Christie's London in December 2008, about 24.3 million dollars and a record at the time. Laurence Graff then had it recut, losing more than four carats. The colour grade improved and the value rose; historians called it vandalism. Condition and originality pull against each other in every collecting field.

What a charity evening can take from this

The first lesson is the Pink Star in 2013. A record was announced, reported worldwide and then quietly reversed because the buyer did not pay. Small auctions have the same problem in miniature: the guest who bids enthusiastically at ten in the evening and is unreachable on Monday. Register bidders properly, take a card at sign-in, and make the terms plain before the first lot. There is more on running the room cleanly on the how it works page.

The second is that every stone above has a name. Not one of them was sold as a 14.62-carat blue diamond; it was sold as the Oppenheimer Blue. Naming is not decoration, it is what makes a thing memorable enough to chase. The same applies when a local restaurant donates a dinner: "dinner for eight in the kitchen with the chef, on a Tuesday when the restaurant is closed to everyone else" is a lot, while "restaurant voucher" is not. The guide works through how to describe donated lots.

Third, look at how often the same buyer appears. Joseph Lau is on this list three times, twice in one week. In a hall of two hundred people, a handful of guests will account for most of the total, and they will bid across several lots rather than once. Order your lot list so those people are still in the room and still have money left when the big lot comes up, and do not put your strongest lot first. Practical sequencing for a gala evening is covered on the page for charities and galas.

Fourth, estimates are guesses. The Princie was expected to pass 45 million and made 39.3; the Graff Pink was estimated at up to 38 and made 46. Set a low opening bid, let the room find the number, and resist the urge to protect a lot with a reserve that stops the bidding before it starts. If you want to see how a full evening behaves before committing to one, there is a walk-through at getting started, and other pieces on auction records are collected in the news section.

Prices as reported at the time of sale; figures include buyer's premium where stated.