Diamond fetches record €8.06m

A 110-carat yellow jewel called the Sun Drop Diamond, thought the biggest of its kind in the world, was sold for a record 10 million Swiss francs (€8.06 million) during an auction in Geneva, announced Sotheby’s.

“Ten million francs (€8.06 million). Sold!,” Sotheby’s David Bennett said before about 150 people gathered for the sale at a luxurious Geneva hotel.

“It’s an absolute record for a yellow diamond,” Mr Bennett told journalists after the sale. “It is a spectacular, unique stone.”

He said the buyer was an “anonymous individual” who made the winning bid over the telephone.

The sale price was slightly less than the estimations of experts who had valued the yellow diamond at between $11 and $15 million.

Gemologists have certified the pear-shaped jewel as Fancy Vivid Yellow, the rarest and most desirable colour for a yellow diamond, said Sotheby’s.

The gem was discovered in South Africa in 2010 and wowed visitors to London’s Natural History Museum where it was displayed earlier this year, and also in Hong Kong.

The yellow diamond, about the size of a woman’s thumb, takes its colour from traces of nitrogen in its carbon make-up.

“Every time we’ve shown it around the world, people have gone ‘oh my god’,” Mr Bennett, head of jewellery for Europe and the Middle East, said last week.