An exquisite blue diamond went up for auction at Sotheby’s in Geneva last night after months of pre-sale press coverage. The internally flawless 7.03 carat stone was cut from a 26.58 carat rough stone found at the Cullinan mine is South Africa in 2008. Cut into a modified rectangular shape and mounted in a platinum setting, the diamond has yet to be named by its new owner, who paid $9.5 million for the piece.
Sotheby’s, after its Magnificent Jewels sale on Tuesday, revealed that this diamond has set the per-carat record of $1.35 million. A 15-minute bidding war took place before the anonymous telephone buyer went up to 10.5 Million Francs.
Sotheby’s has remained confident about the value of diamonds and the prices they will fetch at auction. Over the past few months—through various press releases, articles, and the pure beauty and rarity of the diamond—Sotheby’s has generated a tremendous international interest in this particular piece. It was expected that a gem billed as an “important and rare, fancy, vivid, internally flawless blue diamond weighing 7.03 carats” would bring out even the most cautious of collectors.
On the other end of this story is the Cullinan mine, owned by Petra Diamonds. Claiming that the global recession had caused diamond prices to fall up to 45% since 2007, he had to “streamline” the operations there. Ambrose Gambushe, who worked in the mine for 10 years guarding the machinery that digs out tunnels a half-mile below the surface, was paid a salary of 21,000 rand, or about $2,598.00, per month. Having fractured a shoulder blade falling down slippery stairs in the mine in January, he was called into a disciplinary hearing that found him guilty of “failing to adhere to company safety standards” by not holding onto a handrail. The 43 year-old says he was “humiliated out of his job”.
The married father of two explained that, “The atmosphere at the mine has really deteriorated since Petra bought it from DeBeers last year. Skilled black workers are leaving in droves. You have no prospects at that mine if you are black.” He went on to say that the difference in pay between black and white workers at the same job is up to 10,000 rand, or $1,200. This is a huge amount when it is nearly half a month’s salary. Although DeBeers harbored an Apartheid-related guilt that kept the pay-scale more even, its sale of the Cullinan mine to Petra, a new diamond mining company, left many black workers out in the cold, unable to earn a living.
Although the cut and polished diamond sold at Sotheby’s pulled in over $9 million, it is most likely that the unskilled laborer who found the rough stone is earning about 6,000 rand, or about $713 per month, if he is still employed there.
