An extremely rare 37.3-carat pink diamond goes under the hammer on Wednesday as the top offer at Sotheby’s jewel sale, after rival auction house Christie’s sold a whopping gem for nearly $34m. The twice-yearly precious jewel sales held at glitzy hotels overlooking lake Geneva have been raking in eye-watering sums in recent years and the demand for coloured diamonds remains strong. Sotheby’s has put a target price of $30m on the "Raj Pink", which was discovered as a rough crystal in SA in 2015, before being refined by a master cutter. This price would be far short of the record $71.2m that the 59.6-carat "Pink Star" earned in April, the highest amount ever paid for any gemstone at auction. But the Raj Pink will still be a unique acquisition for Wednesday’s successful buyer, according to the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), which certified the diamond as a "fancy intense pink", meaning it has unusually clear and natural colour. "Only on the rarest occasions do diamonds with vib...
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