It is often true that the bigger the stone, the bigger the story. The Golden Canary diamond is one such mineral storyteller. And now it's set to go up for auction at Sotheby's in New York in December 2022.
The stone, which weighs 303.10 carats, is the largest flawless or internally flawless diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). Of course, what makes it stand out beyond its massive size is its color. A flashy deep brownish yellow that is warm as sunlight but with an autumnal hue.
“With its almost unbelievable combination of size and saturation, the Golden Canary is literally unprecedented.” Sotheby's
High-quality yellow diamonds are much rarer than their colourless counterparts. According to Sotheby's, mining just 0.006% of all diamonds are fancy yellow diamonds. Of these, only a small percentage will be saturated and internally flawless like the Golden Canary.
This diamond also has a fascinating history and provenance that will be particularly enticing to collectors. It used to weigh a little over 407 carats and was called the “Incomparable Diamond”.
However, they decided to recut this original stone and turn its shield shape into the classic pear shape. Now, the gemstone has a deeper color, brighter hue and more elegant shape that will hopefully attract as large an audience as possible.
If we look further back in time, we end up in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the early 1980s. Originally a young girl playing in the yard of her uncle's house found it in a pile of rubble. At the time, miners from the nearby MIBA diamond mine had deemed the discovery too bulky to be a diamond and had thrown it away.
The miners did not know that this rubble was a rough diamond of 890 carats. One of the largest rough diamonds the world had ever seen. The girl gave the stone to her uncle, who in turn sold it to local diamond dealers.
It was later presented to the public in 1984 at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Over the next five years, the rough diamond was cut into 15 finished gemstones.
One of them was the “Unparalleled Diamond”, which was given the shape of a shield to preserve the weight of the raw material. They displayed it at numerous exhibitions around the world and accelerated discussions to recut it.
On the decision, GIA says that re-cutting Incomparable to its current 303.10-carat pear brilliant-cut diamond is to see the diamond as new. A re-creation that brings to fruition the advances in technology, computer modeling and visual evaluation available today. They took into account everything from the orientation of the stone to the shape and cutting style.
A diamond of such historic importance will draw a crowd at Sotheby's in New York when it goes up for auction on 7 December 2022. Before that, however, it will embark on a world tour of Sotheby's galleries. It will start in Dubai and travel to Taipei, Geneva and Hong Kong.
It is valued at $15 million and the bidding is unrestricted, with offers starting at just $1.
