Petra's blue diamond fetches record $9.5m

13th May 2009 10:09

A rare blue diamond has set a new world record price per carat in the midst of the global recession when it was sold in Geneva on Tuesday. Petra Diamonds, the company which discovered the stone at the Cullinan mine in South Africa last year, said the stone sold for $9,488,754m, or $1,349,752 per carat, the highest price ever for a gem of its kind.The anonymous phone bidder has yet to name the diamond.The previous world record was held by a 3.73 carat, fancy vivid blue pear-shaped diamond which sold for $1,328,444 per carat in May 2008. Petra's 7.03-carat stone, which was cut from the 26.58 carat rough stone, was expected to fetch between $5.8m and $8.5m at Sotheby's Magnificent Jewels.Talking to ShareCast before the sale, executive chairman Adonis Pouroulis explained why the diamond is so rare: "It is a number of factors together. It's the size, the colour, but most of all the clarity." The Gemological Institute of America graded the stone as fancy vivid blue in colour and internally flawless in clarity, the highest possible grading for a blue diamond. Its quality is enhanced by its Cullinan origins, a mine that is renowned for producing many of the world's most famous diamonds. The mine earned its place in history with the discovery of the Cullinan diamond in 1905, the largest gem diamond ever found at 3,106 carats rough.