Sorters scrutinize some of the smaller stones from Lucara’s Botswana operation.
The 812.77-carat sale had Lucara Diamond TSX:LUC bragging about “the highest price ever achieved for a rough diamond, breaking all records”—and the company has an even bigger stone going to auction next month. Lucara got $63.11 million, or $77,649 per carat, for the newly named Constellation, one of last November’s big finds from the Karowe mine in Botswana. The company retains a 10% interest in Constellation’s cut-and-polished profits.
Lucara’s record-breaking recovery, just days before Constellation, was the 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona, from which Sotheby’s hopes to raise more than $70 million in London next month. As a gem-quality rough it ranks second in size only to the 3,106.75-carat Cullinan stone found in South Africa in 1905.
Cullinan was cut into nine polished gems, eight of them set into Britain’s Crown jewels. The ninth, the 530.2-carat Great Star of Africa, now resides in Queen Elizabeth II’s sceptre. It’s considered the world’s largest top-quality polished diamond but, Sotheby’s says, might lose that distinction to Lesedi La Rona.
But for that to happen, “a full complement of truly diamantine nerves will be required,” the auctioneer points out. “For while the art and craft of diamond-cutting—a meditative skill often passed down through generations—has radically improved since the Cullinan was cut, it is still through man’s ingenuity that the full beauty and light of a gem is revealed.”
Constellation bagged considerably more than the extraordinary cut-and-polished sales of recent months, including the $48.4-million Blue Moon of Josephine.
At a special tender of Karowe rough last month, Lucara flogged 10 diamonds totalling 1,525 carats for $51.3 million.
Last year Lucara attributed its historic finds partly to Karowe’s new XRT recovery circuit. The company planned to spend $15 million to $18 million to integrate an additional recovery process for exceptionally large gems.
See an infographic: Six of the world’s most famous diamonds.
Read more at the original source: http://resourceclips.com/2016/05/09/lucara-gets-63-million-for-record-rough-diamond-expects-even-more-next-month/
