Record Price for Humble Heirloom
October 30, 25
It was an inheritance from her grandmother, an unremarkable ring that she wore every day.
Then for some reason she stopped. And she decided to take the ring, together with other items of jewelry, to be valued at the Aste Bolaffi auction house, in Turin, Italy.
The pink stone in the center was just common rose quartz. And the Bulgari inscription on the shank was just an inscription. Or so she thought.
Stories of unrecognized treasures lurking in attics or the back of drawers are commonplace. Just watch any episode of Antiques Roadshow on TV. But this one trumps them all.
The "quartz" turned out to be a 3.18-carat VS2 Type IIa fancy intense, cut-corner, rectangular step-cut pink diamond. The ring was, as the inscription said, made by Bulgari. And it was set with 64 colorless brilliant and baguette diamonds (tcw 1.93 carats).
It sold for $2.6m earlier this month, more than double its pre-sale high estimate - the second highest price ever achieved by a jewel at auction in Italy. And the highest price for any lot, ever, at Aste Bolaffi.
The owner almost fainted, Margherita Criscuolo, press office manager for the Bolaffi Group, told IDEX Online when she realized what the ring was worth.
"It really was quite a shock for her," she said. "The owner - an Italian woman now in her 50s, who had inherited the ring from her grandmother decades ago when she was very young - had worn it for many years, quite casually, completely unaware of its value, and rather naively so, despite the Bulgari signature.
"Given its large size, she believed it was quartz. At a certain point, she stopped wearing it. Since she didn't use it any more, she decided to sell it.
"And so she asked our experts for an evaluation of the ring, together with other jewels she had. And when she discovered it… she nearly fainted."
Experts at the auction house recognised the ring as an art deco-inspired trombino (Italian for "little trumpet") made by Bulgari in the 1970s.
They sent it to GIA, who confirmed that the gem was indeed an exceptional pink diamond.
The ring, lot 277 in a Fine Jewels sale, was listed with an estimate of EUR 800,000 (USD 860,000) to EUR 1.2m (USD 1.3m).
But interest was intense, with 17 phone bidders from the US, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, several Middle Eastern countries, and Hong Kong.
Bidding started at EUR 400,000 (USD 470,000) and immediately leapt to EUR 1m (USD 1.1m). The final hammer price was EUR 2.26m (USD 2.60m).
The seller hasn't been named by the auction house, and no further details about her have been revealed.
But two thoughts strike me. The first is about the intrinsic value of a super-rare diamond like this. The owner wore it every day and, presumably, derived some pleasure from doing so.
How much more pleasure would she have derived had she known its true value? An extra $2.6m of pleasure?
The second is more practical. Had she known 30 years ago that the lump of "quartz" was actually a 3.18-carat pink diamond, would she have carried on wearing it, or would she have sold it the same day and sailed off into the sunset?
Have a fabulous weekend.