About
Fancy Diamond World (FDW)
it's a beautiful
colorful
natural world
Most diamonds fall into a color range that stretches from D, which is a grade issued to an essentially colorless stone, though to Z, where a yellowish tinge can be easily detected. As they move up the scale, the average price per carat rises, quite dramatically. But what happens when diamonds fall outside the standard color range? These are the fancy colors, and they are among the most widely sought-after gemstones in the world. In fact, the price paid for a vivid pink or blue natural diamond will generally far exceed that which can be obtained for top-quality D-color diamond of similar size and quality.
vivid blue 14.62-carat Oppenheimer Blue,
which sold for $57.5 million at Christie’s in Geneva
Eight out of the ten highest prices ever paid for polished diamonds at auction, and all five of the highest prices, involved fancy colored diamonds. Leading the pack was the 59.6-carat vivid pink Pink Star, which fetched $71 million at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong in April 2017. It was followed by the vivid blue 14.62-carat Oppenheimer Blue, which sold for $57.5 million at Christie’s in Geneva in May 2016. The price per carat for the Oppenheimer Blue, $3.93 million, was more than 15 times that of the most expensive colorless diamond ever sold at auction.
colorful variety
Fancy colored diamonds can found be a surprisingly wide variety of hues, from faint shades of pastel pink, brown or yellow to the deep or vivid shade of blue, green, orange and red. Their colors are the result of elements other than carbon being present in the diamond at the molecular level, and sometimes because of faults in the diamond’s crystal structure. They are exceedingly rare. Indeed, only about one-tenth of one percent of the gem-quality diamonds mined each year are truly fancy colored. But not all fancy colored diamonds are equally as valuable. Among the more commonly obtained varieties are the browns, greys and fancy yellows. Next up the scale are intense and vivid yellow diamonds, or canary yellows, and orangey diamonds. Then come the pure orange stones, greens, purples, pinks and blues, and at the top of the heap, and extremely rare are red diamonds.
The average prices per carat of a fancy diamond rises as its hue increases in tone (or relative darkness) and saturation (or intensity). Thus, while a faintly yellowish diamond would be placed at the less expensive end of the standard color scale, an intensely yellow diamond, “canary yellow” could be sold at a handsome premium. Diamonds in general have traditionally been associated with wealth and luxury, but in recent years it the fancy colored diamonds that have most caught the public imagination, largely because they also have been linked to celebrity.
It started in 2002 when actor Ben Affleck proposed marriage to his then-girlfriend, the actress and singer Jennifer Lopez, with a 6.1-carat radiant pink diamond ring, for which he had paid $1.2 million at Harry Winston. Ultimately Ben and J.Lo never married, but the publicity that greeted their engagement, with the pink diamond gracing newspaper front pages and magazine covers around the world, set off a firestorm that continues to this day. Singer Carrie Underwood received a plus-5-carat canary yellow diamond ring from her ice-hockey-playing husband Mike Fisher, and model Heidi Klum was handed a 10-carat oval yellow diamond by her prospective husband, the singer Seal. Diva Mariah Carey received from fiancé Nick Cannon a ring with a 17-carat, square emerald-cut fancy pink diamond center stone, which itself was surrounded by 58 pink diamonds.
