Beau Sancy Diamond, Historic Royal Jewel, Sold For $9.7 Million At Auction

The Beau Sancy, a 34.98 carat diamond put on sale by Sotheby's auction house in Geneva, is presented in Paris, Monday April 23, 2012. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)

GENEVA -- Marie de Medici wore it at her coronation as Queen Consort of Henry IV in France in 1610, and now the Beau Sancy diamond is a lavish accessory owned by an anonymous bidder who paid $9.7 million for it at Sotheby's auction.

The spring auction season for jewelry and watches is upon Geneva, where elegant lakefront hotels fill with well-heeled buyers and bidders in a scene far removed from the debate over European austerity.

Five bidders fueled the price on Tuesday at the Sotheby's sale for the Beau Sancy, a 34.98 carat diamond that had passed among the royal families in France, England, Prussia and the Netherlands. It was sold by the Royal House of Prussia, the line of descendants that once ruled Prussia.

Another historical item, the Murat Tiara, sold for $3.87 million. The pearl-and-diamond tiara was created for the marriage of a prince whose ancestors included the husband of Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister.

 A diamond brooch known as the "Bonnie Prince Charlie" sold for $968,085. The brooch features a yellow diamond once owned by Charles Edward Stuart, whose attempt to regain the British crown led to the Battle of Culloden in 1745.

 At a Christie's auction Monday to benefit 32 charities favored by the Lily Safra Foundation, Safra's donated jewelry fetched nearly $38 million in sales – almost double what was expected.

 The most expensive item there was a 32.08-carat Burmese ruby and diamond ring that sold for $6.7 million, a world record price for a ruby sold at auction. Eighteen jewels by the designer JAR collectively brought in $11.4 million.

 After the auction, the billionaire Lily Safra beamed as she won a standing ovation from the buyers and bidders she had come to thank.

 She later told reporters that selling a heap of jewels for charity – rather than keeping them unused in a vault – felt like one of the best things she'd ever done in her life.

Comments

[outasite]

06:45 AM on 05/18/2012

And the rich keep getting richer...

[pines15]

02:11 PM on 05/17/2012

who in their right mind would pay 9.7M for a diamond?

[Razdbywolfs]

09:31 AM on 05/17/2012

Thank you Jason Thompson for adding perspective to this story. The rarity of Diamonds is a hoax. I chose to buy my wife a man-made, GIA certified, .75ct pink diamond, for the very reasons Mr. Thompson recounts. Unlike it's "blood relatives" our pink is actually rare and the first of it's kind to be used for an engagement ring. It's sad to think a mined diamond of identical color and characteristics would cost as much as a new BMW.

[dil123]

08:40 AM on 05/17/2012

I just clicked in to see who would pay that kind of money for a diamond, but of course they were anonymous. As much as I like to look at diamonds I like the colored stones better. My mother has a emerald and diamond ring that I really like, it comes in a set with earrings. I asked her if she could will me the ring. I don't care about the earrings, I just want the ring. It's the prettiest ring I've ever seen in my life. I hope my mother lives to be way over 100, of course, but one day I would like her to give me her ring.

[harkone75]

08:13 AM on 05/17/2012

When it comes to diamonds you think of marriage...please remember what I tell you...the leading cause of devorce is marriage...have a good day!

[LadySaera]

03:14 AM on 05/17/2012

Well, it's for charity, and with that kind of money, I hope it helps a lot of people;).

[florencebrady]

01:19 AM on 05/17/2012

Oh darn!

I didn't know about the auction so somebody else got the diamond I wanted!

[darkevolutonary]

09:32 PM on 05/16/2012

Mr. Freeze is looking for that diamond...

[ChuckWillsWidow]

08:35 PM on 05/16/2012

Those eyes on the lady in the video are way prettier than the diamond.

[wmechaneer]

08:01 PM on 05/16/2012

This certainly redefines the "rock - paper" parts of the old game.

What re-defines the "scissors"?

[mjmjupiter]

07:48 AM on 05/17/2012

When made of platinum, of course.

[skatulaki]

08:00 PM on 05/16/2012

Anyone who would pay that much for a rock is no smarter than the rock !!

[jason thomson]

10:15 PM on 05/16/2012

Diamonds are not as rare as people think, but certainly appear to be when you strictly control the numbers allowed to be sold. The Rothschild controlled Oppenheimer family control & callously manipulate the diamond trade & they are behind De Beers.

It began in Kimberly, South Africa, in 1871 when a huge quantity of diamonds were found. Before that, comparatively few were mined, mostly from India & Brazil.
The infamous & ruthless Rothschild agent, Cecil Rhodes, paid £6,000 to a farmer called De Beer for his diamond-rich land & brought all claim holders in the area into his company, De Beers Consolidated Mines, formed in 1888.
It was a diamond cartel & to expand his power, Rhodes & the British Empire went to war with the Dutch-descended settlers in South Africa, the Boers (farmers), known today as Afrikaners.

Historian Mark Weber wrote,
Rhodes waged war against all who got in his way of consolidating the diamond mines. Supported by the British government , which agreed to his Anglo-American vision, Rhodes waged a financial war against competitors Barney Barnato's Standard Company & Baring Gould's Central Company. Rhodes said of the Central Company, 'We must have the four mines & i will allow no foreign vulture to step in at the end & form a separate mine on the stock exchange apart from us to get a floatation on our name.' His method was to swallow up poorer ones & buy out richer ones.

[jason thomson]

10:37 PM on 05/16/2012

In 1914, some 12 years after Rhodes died, along came a German-born diamond dealer called Ernest Oppenheimer, who discovered enormous quantities of diamonds in what was then called German South West Africa, now Namibia.
It was the biggest diamond mine in history at that time & so abundant that black people were deployed with a tin can around their necks to around on hands & knees & pick them up.
Oppenheimer secured control of the land, but his report on the find was kept hidden from the public to keep secret the number of diamonds available.
He called his company the Anglo American Corporation to acknowledge his investors in England (primarily the Rothschilds) & in America (the J.P. Morgan operation controlled by the Rothschilds).

The Oppenheimers & the Rothschilds are both German Khazar/Sumerian banking families & closely connected.
In the 1920s, Ernest Oppenheimer , supported by the Rothschilds, made his move on De Beers. He told them that if they did not make him chairman of the company, he would flood the market with diamonds & crash the price.
He became chairman in 1929 & the takeover of the global diamond trade was complete.

[jason thomson]

11:24 PM on 05/16/2012

With the discovery of diamonds and gold in South Africa, the Rhodes-Oppenheimer-Rothschild operation needed miners to work for pittance. With the potential workforce living off the land, not interested in mining, they needed to force them into working for them. One way was to introduce taxes for anything they could think of — a poll tax, hut tax, even a dog tax — and because they lived a cashless life of self-sufficiency, they could not pay these taxes. This forced the men to leave their families to walk hundreds miles to work in the mines in horrendous conditions and sign contracts that could not be broken.

Former De Beers employee, Gordon Brown described the scene, "When I arrived in the mine in 1968, I was quite appalled by the conditions for the migrant labourers. The working hours were a long 60-hour week.The conditions under which they worked - they were out in the open, very little protection against the cold and the wind. They weren't given much to eat. They were given half a loaf of brown bread and a flask of cold tea to last them throughout that 10-hour shift. Conditions in the hostels were not much better. There were no decent dining facilities. They had to eat in their rooms out of aluminium buckets. There was no real privacy. The hostels themselves were not very nice places to be in - single-sex hostels, 20 people to a room, in some instances."

[norbekauss]

01:14 AM on 05/17/2012

Well spoken by someone who has nothing.

[dzieczko]

07:46 PM on 05/16/2012

gross blue nail polish - detracts from the presentation

[websailor]

07:14 PM on 05/16/2012

Actially selling jewerly for charity is a wonderful thing especlly, since al it is doing is sitting in vault.

[jason thomson]

08:01 PM on 05/16/2012

If Lily Safra thinks she is selling jewelry for 'charity' then she is full of hypocritical self-deceit. Cognitive dissonance.
How much of that money is actually going to get to the people that need it rather than lawyers & profiteers of scam charities?

Lets murder & enslave people with our BLOOD DIAMONDS, then throw some peanuts back once in a while so we can convince ourselves we are decent & charitable & go to bed feeling like we have done something good with our greedy, sick, selfish selves. YUCK.

If it wasn't for billionaires like Safra, there would be little NEED for charity.

[Rachetwench]

07:08 AM on 05/17/2012

I can't even imagine the tax write-offs this will net Safra - oh, but charity is such a 'worthy' cause! I ain't buyin' it, but I'm a cynic, too.

[crafterlady]

12:12 PM on 05/17/2012

That doesn't even make sense....what about people with handicaps, Alzheimer's, etc? I've worked for nonprofits for more than 15 yrs...and we work very hard to make sure at least 90% of all funds go to service our clients. Not all charities are bogus, ya know!

[websailor]

03:55 PM on 05/17/2012

thank you

[bdot157]

07:04 PM on 05/16/2012

Lily Safra killed her husband & blamed the male nurse & ruined his life , some say !!

[Al Schrader]

06:46 PM on 05/16/2012

I'm actually a jeweler. What made this stone valuable is its history. I've made pieces with large stones, and they always look fake even though I used genuine stones. Diamonds are not the most valuable stones, emeralds are. I get my raw emeralds in New York and have them cut to my specifications in Thailand. When I design a piece, I do it as a work of art, sometimes making and discarding sketches for a week. The one I'm most proud of is a solid green onyx egg I made that I set with pale green peridots and a stripe of diamonds.....Alfred-

[bigbe]

07:59 PM on 05/16/2012

That I would like to see! This diamond seems to be all over the place with the facets but maybe it is just the picture.

[roseyaire]

08:33 PM on 05/16/2012

That's interesting. Thanks, Al. I'd love to see some of your work.