Sotheby’s will offer an 11.28-carat blue diamond in a single-lot Hong Kong auction, where it is expected to fetch up to $37 million.
The October 5 sale of the radiant-cut, fancy-vivid blue diamond, called the Infinite Blue, will kick off the fall luxury auction series in the municipality, Sotheby’s said Thursday. The stone was specifically cut to include the number eight, which is considered a symbol of prosperity in Asia and is the universal symbol for infinity, the auction house explained.
The original rough that was cut into the Infinite Blue was discovered in Petra Diamonds’ Cullinan mine in South Africa. The type IIb stone is one of the fewer than 0.1% of diamonds with that color to emerge from the deposit. It is also one of only four fancy-vivid-blue diamonds over 10 carats from the mine that have come to auction. The others were the 14.62-carat Oppenheimer Blue, which garnered $57.5 million in 2016; the 15.10-carat De Beers Blue, which sold for $57.5 million in 2022; and the Blue Moon of Josephine, a 12.03-carat diamond that achieved $48.5 million in 2015.
