The world’s largest pink diamond a 12.76 carat gem to be known as the Argyle Pink Jubilee was found at Rio Tinto’s Argyle mine in the remote east Kimberley region of Western Australia. (1)
The pink diamond is the world’s most rare and valuable diamond. The Argyle mine is the world’s foremost source of unrivalled intense pink diamonds, producing 95% of the world’s supply. However, an extremely small proportion of Argyle Diamonds production is Pink colour, in fact less than one tenth of 1% is classified Pink. (2)
The legend of Argyle pink diamond has grown over the past ten years. At the 1989 Christie’s auction in New York a 3.14 carat Argyle pink sold for $1,510,000. Privately, Argyle has sold pink diamonds for up to $1 million a carat. (2)
Cleaning is expected to take up-to ten days, thereafter the diamond will be shown at international exhibitions around the world before being sold. Pink diamonds attract, on average, twenty times the price of an equivalent white diamond – the Argyle if sold for as much as one million dollars per carat will fetch close to 13 million dollars.
Argyle Pink Diamonds manager Josephine Johnson said a diamond of its calibre was unprecedented.
“It has taken 26 years of Argyle production to unearth this stone and we may never see one like this again,” Ms Johnson said.
Science Insight – How Diamonds Form in Nature
References: (1) AAP News ‘Rio’s Biggest Pink Diamond Gets the Cut’. (2) Costello’s ‘Types of Diamonds’.
