Christie’s New York Magnificent Jewels Auction Sells Majority Of Items

Christie’s New York Magnificent Jewels on July 29th has sold almost 83% of items listed, but removed all unsold items from their website, which translates into a complete lack of transparency. Could we be partially transparent? or can we be either completely transparent or completely opaque? that is a question for the public to decide and vote on.

The auction house ended up selling a total of $28,142,500. Some prominent items such as a diamond and Jadeite necklace by the famous Anna Hu went unsold. The three top sold items, and the only three to sell above $1 million made up over 43% of sold items by value and only 1.4% of number of items actually sold.  

The 7.16 carat, Fancy Intense Blue diamond with Internally Flawless clarity has sold for $3,855,000 or $538k per carat, compared to the $3.5 million to $5 million valuation (GIA #2201939114). What really made it that it was sold for less than the minimum valuation (hammer price)? Is that where the market stands right now? Does this mean that unique and rare Fancy Color Diamonds are out of flavour? Are investors not wanting these rarity anymore? do we really know? my opinion is that we don’t really know. Remember that although auction house results and promotions of rare diamonds push the overall market, yet they are still a minimal amount of transactions. We also have to take into consideration that auction houses, like all other industries and businesses have lost a lot of sales and transactions and therefore are also cutting costs in various ways, and marketing is a major component of their expenses.

The 7.65 carat, Fancy Light Purplish Pink Diamond with a VS2 clarity was estimated to be sold between $400k and $600k ended up selling for $819k total or $107k per carat (GIA #2201892281). As we said before, we will follow up on this diamond and see if it gets upgraded in any way.

Auctions of significant value are done for the summer. Many of the auctions globally were delayed or cancelled because of Covid-19. We hope that in the fall we will see other interesting items at the various auctions. The year 2020 will be remembered as an exceptional year, not only in jewelry auction but as a market disturbance and as a reminder for us to innovate and think out of the box in the future.