Diamonds, rubies, emeralds and other precious stones are immortal symbols of wealth and luxury. They are credited with magical properties, passed down from generation to generation, and the powers that be even collect entire collections of jewelry with precious stones, the cost of which reaches astronomical amounts.
Have you ever wondered what the most expensive jewelry in the world looks like? Well, we will be happy to answer it.
10. Bracelet watch “201 carats”
Show time for 25 million dollars.
Imagine a picture: you are walking along a street, an outsider asks: “Can you tell me what time it is?” You with a careless gesture move the sleeve of your clothes and expose your wrist, on which ... a watch made of 874 diamonds!
Chopard’s 201 carat bracelet watch is a masterpiece not only of timing, but also of jewelry. Thanks to the colorful cluster of diamonds on this elegant piece of jewelry, its price is $ 25 million. It is one of the ten most expensive watches in the world.
But, unlike other super-expensive watches, Chopard’s 201 carat can be worn exclusively as a bracelet. Its dial will not be visible until a special movement reveals three large diamonds in the center of the bracelet.
9. Hatton Mdivani Necklace
Estimated at 27.4 million dollars.
One of the most famous and expensive jewelry in the world consists of 27 jade beads with a diameter of 15 mm, with a clasp made of 18 ct yellow gold, rubies and diamonds.
The most famous owner of it was the American Barbara Hatton, received a necklace from her father as a gift for a wedding with the Georgian prince Alexis Mdivani in 1933. Two years later, the marriage broke up, but the necklace for a long time remained in the Mdivani family.
Nina Mdivani, wife of the son of Conan Doyle, did not leave the necklace even in the most difficult time for herself. But after her death, a jade necklace was still sold for $ 2 million. Since then, it has been resold twice more, until it got to the Cartier jewelry house, where it is located to this day.
8. The Blue Moon of Josephine
A diamond is worth $ 48.4 million.
In 2015, Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau purchased a delightfully blue diamond for his daughter, in whose honor he received his name.
Diamond, which later became Josephine’s Blue Moon, was discovered in 2014 in a mine in South Africa. Without cutting, he weighed 29.6 carats, and after processing he “lost weight” and began to weigh 12.03 carats.
Together with the Blue Moon, Joseph Lau's daughter, Josephine, became the owner of another gem - a pink diamond worth $ 28.5 million. It was called unpretentiously - "Sweet Josephine." What can I say, the girl was lucky.
7. Pink Graff
One of the most expensive rings in the world worth 46.2 million dollars.
This ring, in which an almost 25-carat pink diamond is embedded, was once owned by New York jeweler Gary Winston. For about 60 years he kept it in his private collection.
When a rare pink diamond appeared at Sotheby’s auction in 2010, no one expected it to be sold for $ 46.2 million. The ring was valued at no more than 38 million dollars. However, the new owner - billionaire Lawrence Graff - laid out an incredible amount for the right to call this precious thing by his name.
6. Necklace “Incomparable”
Available for $ 55 million.
In 2013, Lebanese jewelry brand Mouawad introduced the L’Incomparable necklace, made of diamonds weighing 637 carats. At its center is the largest of the currently known yellow diamonds; it weighs 407.48 carats.
According to legend, a small resident of Congo found a yellow gem in a pile of ordinary stones. Prior to cutting, he weighed 890 carats.
5. Blue Oppenheimer
It was sold by Christie`s auction house for 57.5 million dollars.
One of the most expensive jewels in the world weighs 14.62 carats.
Most of the history of the Blue Oppenheimer is shrouded in secrecy, with the exception of the fact that it was mined somewhere in South Africa, probably in the early 20th century.
The diamond was handed to Sir Philip Oppenheimer, whose family had long controlled the company De Beers. He bought a stone as a gift for his wife, although details about when it happened and how much it cost were not known.
In 2016, the Christie’s auction house put up the famous blue rectangular-cut diamond for auction. It took only 25 minutes to get it by a buyer who wished to remain anonymous.
4. The pink star
This diamond is worth $ 71.2 million.
Before becoming a luxurious 59.6 carat piece of jewelry, Pink Star was a rough diamond weighing 132.5 carats. It was mined by employees of the international corporation De Beers in 1999 in South Africa.
After 20 months of work by the best jewelers from Steinmetz Diamonds, the Pink Star has acquired its current form. And in 2017, it was sold at Sotheby’s auction for $ 71.2 million. The buyer was the Hong Kong jewelry company Chow Tai Fook, which renamed the diamond in its honor - CTF Pink.
3. The Diamond Peacock
The price of the jewel is $ 100 million.
It is hard to imagine that this small 10-centimeter jewelry is one of the most expensive things in the world. It is made by the Graff Diamonds jewelry company, which creates luxury items as beautiful as they are expensive.
The brooch, in the shape of a peacock with its tail open, contains more than 1300 white, yellow, blue and orange diamonds. Their total weight reaches 120.81 carats. At the tip of each feather is a white diamond in the shape of a flower bud.
A very rare, dark blue pear-shaped diamond is placed in the center of the brooch, and its mass reaches 20.02 carats. It can be removed from the brooch and worn like a pendant.
2. Necklace "Blooming Legacy"
The cost of Heritage in Bloom is $ 200 million.
The most expensive diamond necklace in the world was created by Chinese jeweler Wallace Chan and combines the features of eastern and western cultures. It has a complex structure of hundreds of parts, and some of them unites a “common ancestor” - they were created from Cullinan Heritage diamond (“Cullinan's Legacy”) weighing 507.55 carats.
In the center of the necklace is a pure diamond weighing 104 carats (also part of Cullinan’s Heritage), and it took 598 pink diamonds, 10953 small white diamonds and 24 large diamonds to create this triumph of wealth and beauty. Chan also used green jadeite and hundreds of white jade beads in which diamonds were encrusted. And since the weight of thousands of stones is not easy to sustain, the framework of the Blooming Heritage is made of lightweight titanium.
1. Diamond Hope
The cost of the most expensive jewelry in the world is $ 250 million.
“Cursed stone”, “blue Frenchman”, “left eye of the god Rama”, “stone of the goddess Sita”, as soon as this famous faceted diamond was called. Its mass is 45.52 carats, which makes this gem one of the largest diamonds in the world. Experts believe that its unusual sapphire blue color is due to the presence of a small number of boron atoms.
Before the stone turned into a Hope diamond, it was even bigger than it is now. It is believed that it was mined in one of the Golconda mines in South India. In 1666, it was bought by a French jeweler named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier and named the Blue Diamond Tavernier. After some time, the stone was divided into several parts.
- One of the small stones was set into the ring of the Russian Empress Maria Feodorovna and is now in the Diamond Fund.
- The other, a 69-carat “blue Frenchman”, was sold to King Louis XIV, was for a long time one of the treasures of the French crown, and after the French Revolution he went under the hammer, after which his traces were lost. Presumably, the redistributed stone somehow got the English aristocrat Henry Hope.
It seemed that not only people, but also evil forces showed increased interest in the blue diamond.
- A thief who tried to steal him from the statue of Sita, according to legend, died of lightning that struck him.
- In one of his travels, Tavernier suddenly fell ill and died in Moscow, on his way from Copenhagen to Persia.
- In 1715, Louis XIV, often carrying a stone, showed it to the Persian Shah ambassador to demonstrate the complete safety of the jewel. In the same year, the king of France died.
- But Louis XV escaped the curse by ordering him to keep the stone in the chest.
- Marie Antoinette, who wore a diamond, was executed on the guillotine, just like her husband, the French king Louis XVI.
These are only the most famous examples, because the "blue Frenchman" had many owners.
Currently, the blue diamond is one of the stars of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in the United States.
