World's largest uncut diamond was unearthed around two years ago, by Canada's Lucara Diamond Corp, which has been sold out for US $53 million (S$72 million). The tennis ball – sized raw diamond, was owned by British diamond dealer Graff Diamonds for US$47,777 per carat.
The raw diamond will be further cut and polished in Britain. The rough diamond weighs 1,109 carats making it one of the largest uncut diamonds in the world.
The price paid was an "improvement" on the highest bid received for the diamond at Sotheby's in June 2016, Lucara Chief Executive and President William Lamb told Reuters.
Lamb had pitched that ultra-rich collectors who are interested in buying and selling precious antique pieces for the record-breaking sum, would do the same with the new diamond at the auction. The unpredicted bet, however, failed as the bid did not go through and the diamond was not sold.
Lamb later in July said that the unsold stone weighed heavily on the company whose stock is down more than 40% in the past one year.
The 3 billion-year-old diamond which was mined at Lucara 's mine in November 2015, is named as "Lesedi La Rona" or "Our Light" in the local language of Botswana, where it was mined. The Lesedi will "dictate how it wants to be cut, and we will take the utmost care to respect its exceptional properties," Laurence Graff, founder of Graff Diamonds said.
This rough diamond comes second in size to the Cullinan, weighing 3,106.75 carat which was, later on, cut into 105 diamonds. Some of them have made it to the center front of the Imperial State Crown of the Britain, while few of them were used for pendant brooch and Cullinan VI that was used as a drop on a diamond and emerald necklace of Queen Elizabeth II.
