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Bidding stopped millions below the reserve price.
Last night, the stage at Sotheby's was delightfully set for the sale of the Shirley Temple Blue. Old-movie style popcorn and Shirley Temple mocktails with candy cane-striped paper straws were served at the reception, along with boxes of Barnum's Animal Crackers, a reference to the star's hit song "Animal Crackers in My Soup." When the 9.54-carat gem was put on the block the bids went up to $22 million and stopped. The Fancy Deep Blue Diamond did not reach the low estimate of $25 million and went unsold.
While the result was a disappointment in the hot market for fancy color gems, the 14.62-carat Oppenheimer Blue might just set a new high of millions per carat at the May 18 Christie's sale in Geneva. The emerald cut stone is the largest Vivid Blue ever to come up at auction. Now the record for any blue diamond—or any gemstone for that matter—holds at $4,028,941 per carat. It was set for the Blue Moon, a 12.03 Fancy Vivid Blue diamond sold at Sotheby's in November of last year. The total price for the stone, renamed The Blue Moon of Josephine after the sale, was $48,468,158.
Marion Fasel is a jewelry historian and the founder of theadventurine.com
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