The Pink Star — The Largest Fancy Vivid Pink Diamond Graded by GIA
The Pink Star — The Largest Fancy Vivid Pink Diamond Graded by GIA
59.60 carats, Internally Flawless, sold in 2017 for US$71.2 million — a record for any gemstone at auction
The Pink Star is a 59.60-carat oval mixed-cut diamond with the GIA grades Fancy Vivid Pink for colour and Internally Flawless for clarity, the largest stone of these combined grades in the laboratory's history. Originally known as the Steinmetz Pink, the diamond was cut from a 132.5-carat rough diamond mined by De Beers in South Africa in 1999, with the cutting work performed by Steinmetz Diamonds over a two-year period. The Pink Star sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong on 4 April 2017 for HK$553 million (US$71.2 million) to Chow Tai Fook Enterprises and was renamed the CTF Pink Star, setting the record for the highest price ever paid for a gemstone at public auction. The record stood as of 2025 and represents the reference figure for the very top of the fancy-colour diamond market.
The rough and the cut
The 132.5-carat rough that yielded the Pink Star was recovered from a De Beers operation in South Africa in 1999. The locality has not been definitively documented in public records but is consistent with the historic pink-diamond output of the Premier (now Cullinan) mine. The rough was sold to Steinmetz Diamonds, an Israeli cutting and trading firm with a long specialism in significant fancy-colour stones.
Cutting required two years of preparation, planning, and execution. The fancy-colour character of pink diamonds means that the cutter must balance the conventional optical priorities of cut quality with the requirement to maximise face-up colour saturation. The orientation of the rough relative to the colour-bearing zones determines the saturation of the finished stone, and the Steinmetz cutters were working at the edge of the available rough yield to preserve the Fancy Vivid Pink grade across the full size of the cut stone. The final cut is a modified oval mixed cut of 59.60 carats, with proportions optimised for face-up colour rather than for maximum brilliance under conventional brilliant-cut criteria.
The 2013 sale and the failed transaction
The Pink Star was first offered at public auction at Sotheby's Geneva on 13 November 2013, where it sold to Isaac Wolf for CHF 76.3 million (approximately US$83.2 million). The transaction subsequently failed when the winning bidder defaulted on payment, and the stone returned to Sotheby's inventory. The 2013 sale was the highest auction price recorded for any diamond at the time and remained the headline figure for the stone until the 2017 transaction.
The 2013 default produced a complicated set of accounting and inventory consequences for Sotheby's, with the auction house ultimately taking the stone on its own books at a valuation of approximately US$72 million while pursuing the failed bidder for damages. The story of the 2013 sale and its unwinding has been documented in trade-press reporting from Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and the Israeli diamond-trade press.
The 2017 Sotheby's Hong Kong sale
The Pink Star returned to public auction at Sotheby's Hong Kong on 4 April 2017 with a pre-sale estimate of US$60 million. Bidding was conducted in the room and by phone, with the hammer falling at HK$508 million; with buyer's premium the final price was HK$553 million, equivalent to approximately US$71.2 million. The buyer was Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, the Hong Kong jewellery retailer founded in 1929 by Chow Chi-yuen and now one of the largest retail jewellers in Asia.
The 2017 sale established the Pink Star as the highest-priced gemstone at public auction, surpassing the 2016 Oppenheimer Blue (US$57.5 million) and the 2015 Blue Moon of Josephine (US$48.5 million). On a per-carat basis, the Pink Star's US$71.2 million / 59.60 carats works out to approximately US$1.19 million per carat — a strong figure for a fancy-colour diamond at its size band but lower than the per-carat figures achieved by smaller Fancy Vivid Pink stones such as the Pink Legacy.
The CTF Pink Star
Following the 2017 sale, Chow Tai Fook Enterprises renamed the diamond the CTF Pink Star and incorporated it into the company's permanent collection of significant historic stones. The stone has been displayed at Chow Tai Fook events and travelling exhibitions in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and other Asian markets since the acquisition. The renaming follows the convention established by Harry Winston with the Pink Legacy and by other dealers acquiring significant historic diamonds, in which the new owner attaches its own brand to the named stone for purposes of commercial recognition and exhibition.
Position in the market
The Pink Star's auction record represents the reference figure for fancy-colour diamond valuation at the very top of the size and saturation range. The 59.60-carat stone is the largest Fancy Vivid Pink diamond GIA has graded, and the supply of comparable rough material has been further constrained by the November 2020 closure of the Argyle mine in Western Australia, which was the principal source of pink diamonds for the global market between 1985 and 2020. South African Cape sources, the historical origin of large pink diamonds including the Pink Star itself, continue to produce small quantities of fancy-pink material, but stones of the Pink Star's size and saturation are not being replaced from current mining at any documented locality.
The stone's auction history — a US$83.2 million failed sale in 2013, a US$71.2 million completed sale in 2017 — illustrates both the upward trajectory of fancy-colour diamond valuations across the 2010s and the structural fragility of very-high-end auction transactions when settlement and finance arrangements break down. The 2013 default required Sotheby's to take the stone onto its books and pursue alternative disposal, an outcome that reshaped how auction houses contract with bidders on the highest-value lots. Subsequent significant fancy-colour sales have routinely involved substantial pre-sale guarantees and irrevocable bid arrangements to reduce the risk of post-hammer default.
The Argyle context and supply
The closure of the Argyle mine in November 2020 ended the principal source of new pink diamond rough for the global market. Argyle production accounted for an estimated 90 percent of pink diamonds entering the trade between 1985 and 2020, with the balance from Russian, Brazilian, and South African sources. Argyle pink diamonds were typically smaller than the Pink Star — most stones were under one carat in cut weight — but the field's contribution to the broader pink diamond economy was foundational. Post-Argyle supply of pink diamonds to the trade is constrained, and named historic stones such as the Pink Star, Pink Legacy, Graff Pink, and Williamson Pink Star occupy a more prominent position in market discussion as a result.