A 9.51-carat blue diamond sold for $25.6 million at an auction in Switzerland on Tuesday — a steal compared to what it fetched a decade ago.
The teardrop-shaped stone, which previously belonged to Rachel Lambert Mellon, the American heiress and art collector better known as Bunny, had last been auctioned in 2014, when it went for $32.6 million.
But diamonds aren’t what they used to be. Christie’s, the auction house that put it up for bid on Tuesday, had predicted a lower selling price this time of $20 million to $30 million. It landed in the middle of that range.
Max Fawcett, Christie’s incoming global head of jewelry, said in a statement that the sale reflected a “market defined by confidence and discernment.”
But it also reflected profound changes in the world diamond market and the economy more broadly.
Sale prices for diamonds and high-end art have taken a nosedive in recent years. Christie’s took in $2.1 billion from auctions in the first six months of both this year and last year, down from $4.1 billion during the same period in 2022.
The diamond industry has been upended by various factors, including a volatile economy that has prompted potential sellers to sit on their investments and the growing popularity of laboratory-grown diamonds, which has undercut the market for natural stones.
Lab-grown diamonds, also known as synthetic diamonds, are virtually identical in chemical composition to their natural counterparts. They can be grown in almost any size or color, and sell for as little as one-twentieth the price of natural stones.
In a survey of U.S. consumers last year by the Knot, an online wedding planning platform, more than half of respondents said their engagement rings featured a lab-grown diamond as a center stone, up from 12 percent in 2019.
“Due to the rapid development of the synthetic diamonds, people now have many choices,” said Zhiqin Chu, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who researches synthetic diamonds. “They can decide which kind they want.”
Still, for the most high-end consumers, rare blue diamonds clearly retain substantial value, if not the record prices they once reached. In 2016, the 14.62-carat Oppenheimer Blue diamond sold at a Christie’s auction in Geneva for $57.5 million.
Ashley Ahn covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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