Botswana's state-run Okavango Diamond Company unveiled on Wednesday what is believed to be the largest blue diamond ever discovered in the southern African country, one of the world’s top producers.
The 20.46 carats, oval-shape fancy precious rock has been named "The Okavango Blue" in honour of the Okavango Delta, the country's wildlife-rich world heritage site.
From all coloured diamonds, blue ones are the most unusual and that’s why the miner says its find is one of the rarest in the world.
"It is incredibly unusual for a stone of this colour and nature to have come from Botswana – a once-in-lifetime find, which is about as rare as a star in the Milky Way," Okavango Diamond Company managing director Marcus ter Haar said in a statement.
The 20.46 carats, oval-shape fancy precious rock has been named "The Okavango Blue" in honour of the Okavango Delta, the country's wildlife-rich world heritage site.
"It sits in the very top bracket of all-time historical blue diamond finds [especially because] only a very small percentage of the world's diamonds are classified as fancy colour," he noted, adding the company expects to sell it by the end of the year.
In 2016, a massive intense blue diamond, known as The Cullinan Dream, sold for $25.4 million at a Christie’s auction in New York, breaking all records and becoming the most expensive gem of its kind ever sold at auction.
Last year, a 6.16-carat blue diamond, secretly passed down through European royalty over three centuries, fetched $6.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction in Geneva — $1.4 million more than what experts expected it to be sold for.
Arguably, the most famous is the Hope Diamond, also known as Le Bijou du Roi ("the King's Jewel"), Le bleu...