Diamonds Pay Dividends
Nina P. West, Artfact.com 10.10.08, 11:35 AM ET
As the economic picture continues to worsen, the results of a late-September auction of fine jewelry in Chicago begs the casual observer to conclude that collectors are turning to tangible goods as a store of wealth in these uncertain times.
The sale at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago, which attracted buyers from Singapore,
Hong Kong, Italy, Mexico, Hungary and Australia, saw multiple pieces of jewelry selling around the $100,000 mark. This yellow diamond ring and a blue sapphire ring were two of the glittering stars of the show. The yellow diamond ring was bought by a jewelry dealer from New York who had flown in especially for this auction and paid $144,400, four times the expected price.
The ring was sold by a Chicago-area family that had inherited the sparkler from their mother, who had worn it as her wedding ring. The 5.44-carat stone, described as an “intense yellow fancy diamond,” sits in an 18-karat white gold setting created in the 1960s. The family was aware of the ring’s value but didn’t expect the 12-person bidding war among buyers from Bulgaria, New York and Los Angeles.
Artfact Analysis:
Colored diamonds are becoming increasingly popular.
To fill the growing demand, several yellow diamond rings have recently been offered, but none have surpassed the price for the Leslie Hindman ring. Two comparable rings sold comfortably above their pre-auction prices recently at Sotheby’s .
The appeal of colored diamonds isn’t limited to their striking shades; colored diamonds are exponentially more rare than colorless diamonds and thus more desirable. For every 100,000 carats of white or colorless diamonds mined, just one carat of colored diamonds are found. Therefore, these gems tend to rise more quickly in value. Some jewelry experts claim that premium-quality colored diamonds double in value roughly every three to five years.
At Sotheby’s September jewelry auction, the top-selling lots were a sapphire-and-diamond ring, made by Van Cleef & Arpels in Paris, which sold for $656,500–more than double its pre-sale estimate of $250,000 to $350,000; and a colorless diamond ring from Harry Winston, which easily fetched twice its pre-sale estimate of $200,000 to $250,000, when it sold for $470,500.
The all-time high auction price for a stone or piece of jewelry is $16.5 million, a record held by the Sotheby’s in Geneva for a 100.1-carat diamond sold in 1995. For perspective, the average price for a diamond engagement ring sold in the U.S. is around $3,000.
Despite the economic downturn, quality will win out, and the robust prices these pieces continue to fetch are a sign that the highest end of the jewelry market will remain healthy for the foreseeable future.
For thousands of comparable sales for every imaginable collectible, check out Artfact.com, the world’s largest database of auction results.
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