The Annenberg Diamond, an Asscher cut, D color, flawless diamond weighing 32.01 carats, will lead Christie's upcoming New York jewelry sale scheduled for October 21. Estimates for the item, mounted in a ring set alongside two pear shaped diamonds weighing 1.50 and 1.61 carats each, are between $3-5 million.

Viewings for the ring will be held at the New York branch of Christie's in Rockefeller Center, October 16-20, 2009
The diamond belonged to the late Leonore "Lee" Annenberg who served as U.S. chief of protocol during the Reagan administration.

According to Francois Curiel, chairman of Christie's Europe and international head of jewels, the Annenberg diamond "combines the best of the 4 C's: top color, perfect clarity, ideal cut, and excellent weight, one of the finest gems to appear on the market for many years."

Posted on : July 31, 2009

(Financial Times Website, March 27, 2009) In periods of social and financial catastrophe, diamonds have traditionally proved the safest place to put your capital. The Russian emigres of 1917 escaped with nothing but jewels sewn into their corsets; dictators Juan Peron and the Shah of Iran fled into exile with fabulous collections of gemstones. No wonder the big names of London's Bond Street are engaged in one of the highest stakes competitions in history to secure exceptional rough diamonds that may yield a masterpiece. Forget gentleman's rules, these days it is every house for itself.

"Everybody is fighting over the exceptional stones," says Alisa Moussaieff, whose family has traded pearls and gemstones for more than a century. "It's no secret that the sales of five to 10 carat D-flawless diamonds on Bond Street are down. We know the upper management people who earned $1m or $2m a year are not laughing. They may be down to their last $100,000. But the $13bn to $3bn people are still in the market for magnificent stones, such as my blue diamonds."

The cultivation of these recession-proof people has been Mrs Moussaieff's life's work. Her stock is legendary, not least the 5.11-carat Moussaieff Red diamond acquired in 2002 for $8m and the afore-mentioned 39.19-carat blue rough diamond placed in private tender by London-listed miners Petra Diamonds in Johannesburg and bought for $8.8m last 2008 by a South African agent acting for Moussaieff.

"The reality is that those exceptional coloured stones are so, so rare that it would be overstating the case to call it a market," says Varda Shine, managing director of the De Beers Group-owned Diamond Trading Company. "It can be 10 years before you find an important blue stone or a nice pink. We have not found anything magnificent in special colours for a while now and I don't see any new supply for these exceptional coloured stones. They are so unique the trade in them will not suffer at all."

"We are seeing much demand," says Keith Gerrard, managing director at Leviev. "A large, exceptional diamond today is valued at a higher price than 12 months ago. The fact is that such a diamond bought a year ago more than retains its value today. The diamonds we sell-from mines we own-account for only the top 5 per cent of all diamonds mined in the world. The very high-end clientele is increasingly choosing our extraordinary diamonds as a safe, tangible, secure component of their wealth portfolio."

Nir Livnat, CEO of the Steinmetz Group says he had a call from a client who wanted to buy a very important diamond. The group has sold historic rough and polished diamonds for more than 70 years, including the 203.04-carat De Beers Millennium Star.

"I spoke to five or six people in the business who I knew had such a stone and none of them wanted to sell. We are finding that, in the current climate, the diamond is the last possession a person will part with. People are nervous and the market is very slow, but that's because diamonds of the highest quality are valued as an investment," he says.

"I remember when a pink diamond would sell for $5,000 per carat; now it's $120,000 per carat, and that's not even for an intense colour," says Mrs Moussaieff. When Moussaieff bought the rough blue, Mrs Moussaieff declared: "This stone is the most magnificent example of a blue diamond to come on to the international market for 15 years. It will be bought by a cold-blooded investor."

Laurence Graff is similarly bullish. In 2006, the Graff-owned South African Diamond Corporation acquired the 603-carat Lesotho Promise rough diamond for $12.36m. It was the 18th largest diamond ever mined, and Mr Graff set every D-flawless stone from the rough into a single necklace-for which he already had a buyer in mind.

According to Josie Goodbody, Graff's spokeswoman, the said buyer is "currently considering" the piece, priced at a rumoured €50m ($73m). Meanwhile, a sister stone to the Lesotho, the Lesteng Legacy (493-carats from the same mine) was bought in late 2008 and is being cut into what has already been christened the Light of Lesteng.

"People want to buy something that will hold value," says Mr Livnat. "What we don't have are the people who would have previously bought pieces of jewellery for love or fun."

Ms Shine says: "Jewellery bought by investment bankers on their bonuses has suffered. But the large rough stones appear literally once in a blue moon, so they inevitably do better than anything else."

The jewellers, dealers and agents invited to tender for the most important rough diamonds are a well-kept secret and it is a sign of the times that when a jeweller acquires a rough, he "allows" his identity to be known.

"The mystery and excitement that surrounds every new large rough diamond is like The Derby or the Arc to racing people: high drama and uncertainty. No one knows the final result but everyone believes that it will be brilliant," says Andrew Coxon, president of the De Beers Institute of Diamonds.

Yet buying a rough stone is not without risk. "Nature is fickle and even the experts cannot be right every time," admits Mr Coxon. "Some rough diamonds simply blow up on the polishing wheel if they cannot take the stress of the cutting process. It must be remembered that over 50 per cent of the volume will be polished away into powder. A tint of top light brown or graining lines in what might have seemed like a potential D- colour internally flawless diamond would halve the rarity and value at a stroke." Mr Livnat says: "It can take anything from six months to three years to cut the big stones and you only have your experience and judgment to trust that what will emerge from the stone is a masterpiece."

Mrs Moussaieff calls buying a rough diamond "an inspired and intelligent guess; nobody could have guaranteed that my blue would be such a fabulous, lively vivid colour". But the element of high risk and potentially huge loss is relative.

"The public does not understand that the supply outlook is flat," says Mr Coxon. "The collectors certainly fear that, and over the last five years coloured diamonds [both rough and polished] have never been more in demand. The truth is, there will not be an increase in supply for the next 15 years, unless a new mine of importance is found now." And so the battles rage Reprint of Article posted on the Financial Times website, written by James Sherwood

Posted on : July 31, 2009