Christie’s auction house has sold the Wittelsbach Diamond at their Christie’s Jewels: The London sale. The diamond fetched NZ$45,870,169.00- a record price, according to the auction house. International jeweller Laurence Graff of Graff diamonds purchased the Wittlesbach Diamond, a seventeenth-century, cushioned-shaped, deep grayish-blue 35.56 carat VS2 stone, for an average price of NZ$1,289,937.00 per carat.
Francois Curiel, chairman of Christie’s Europe wrote in a statement: “In the midst of these challenging times, we were thrilled to achieve an historic price for an historic diamond. At $45.8 million, the 35.56 carat Wittelsbach blue diamond, dating to the seventeenth century, has become the most expensive diamond sold at auction, topping the previous record of $31 million for a 100-carat diamond in 1995 in Geneva. It was purchased by the leading international jeweller Laurence Graff, bidding against Aleks Paul of Essex Global Trading.