Diamond & Jewelry News, Advice and Prices for Consumers
Diamond & Jewelry News, Advice and Prices for Consumers
September 22, 2010
I remember having heard about Elinore Anneberg's humongous diamond she got for her 90th birthday and then I read she had died. Was that diamond ever auctioned?
September 26, 2010
Yeah, she died a year later, when she was 91 years old. The diamond was a 32 carat (!!!) and it was auctioned and sold for almost 8 million dollars. When Elinore Annenberg received it for her birthday the previous year it had to be guarded by armed men on the way to her finger, naturally. Who knows how she could even have worn such a huge stone. But it is a stunning ring, that's one thing that's certain. It was sold to a phone bidder. About the stone: It is a huge emerald shaped diamond that includes two ~1.5 carat diamonds just as an extra little adornment in the ring's center. Before the auction, estimates were talking about it being sold for 3 million to 5 million dollars, but it turned out that bidders were prepared to pay a lot more. To date, the highest price to have ever been paid in an auction for a diamond was 24.3 million big ones which were paid for a 17th century gray-blue fancy diamond called the Wittelsback Diamond, in late 2008.
September 23, 2010
An anonymous bidder bout it for 7.7 million dollars. This was a much higher price than it was expected to be sold for probably because of the Annenberg name: Elinore had served as the United States chief of protocol During the Ronald Regan administration and Elinore's husband - Richard Annenberg (died in 2002) was the American ambassador in England When Nixon was president. So put that sort of name together with a 32 carat diamond and you get a 7.7 million dollar offer.
