The Russian diamond mining company Alrosa has decided to sell the giant diamond at an auction. As reported by Bloomberg, this is one of the largest gemstones, weighing 242 carats and starting at $ 2 million.
The diamond can be seen in mid-March at the sales office in Dubai, the results of the auction are promised to be announced on March 22. Over the past ten years, Alrosa has put up for auction “only a few diamonds weighing more than 200 carats of comparable quality” as they are extremely rare.
This stone was found in the Nurba deposit in the Far East of Russia more than ten years ago. In addition, the company plans to auction two gems – 190.7 carats and 136.2 carats, as well as other smaller stones.
The largest diamond ever found remains the 3106-carat Cullinan, found in South Africa in 1905. It took two years to cut the fragments obtained from it: in total, 2 huge, 7 large and 96 small diamonds were made. Among the large diamonds found relatively recently, the largest were a 1109-carat stone discovered in Botswana in 2015, and a 910-carat diamond mined by the company in the African kingdom of Lesotho three years ago.