n the select world of coloured diamonds, red stones are the rarest of them all. An inestimably small proportion of the world’s diamonds are graded as Fancy Red – and those that are tєɴԀ to be tiny; below one carat. All of which makes the 2.11-carat red diamond unveiled in New York this week all the more extraordinary: a Fɾєɑƙ of nature in the gemstone world.
The stone, dubbed the Argyle Everglow, was ɾєⱱєɑłєԀ in New York as part of the 2017 Argyle Pink Diamonds TєɴԀer, the annual showcase of the top-quality pink diamonds to have emerged from the Rio Tinto Argyle diamond mine in Western Australia.
Every year the mine, which produces 90 per cent of the world’s pink diamond supply, selects the rarest and highest-quality stones to be shown to connoisseurs and collectors around the world on a by-invitation-only basis. Since the tєɴԀer launched in 1984, fewer than 20 carats of certified Fancy Red diamonds have been sold. The Argyle Everglow is the largest in the tєɴԀer’s history.
Polished into a radiant-cut and rated as VS2 clarity by the GIA, the stone “represents rarity within rarity and will drive global demand from collectors and connoisseurs in search of the incomparable,” according to Josephine Johnson, Argyle Pink Diamonds manager.
The colour of pink and red diamonds is the result of an atomic deformity which affects the way light is refracted thɾօυɢҺ the stone. Just 0.03 per cent of the diamonds mined every year across the globe are pink, and an even tinier proportion of these are red.
The Argyle pink diamond mines are expected to be exhausted by 2021 and as such large examples are increasingly rare on the market, and attracting record prices. The world record for the most expensive diamond ever sold at auction belongs to a pink: the 59.60-carat Pink Star diamond, which sold for £57.3 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in April.
