The story behind the Blue Moon Diamond | Priceless Pieces

Blue diamonds are incredibly rare, only about 0.1% of the diamonds that are mined have any colour in them at all. Very recently in 2014 just under 29 carats of a rough blue diamond was found in the Cullinan mine in South Africa which really created a stir and that resulted in the Blue Moon which weighs about 12 carats. When it came up for auction in 2015 at Sotheby's I went along and had a look at it and I must say I was absolutely bowled over by the colour. It really was superb. I've never seen another blue like it. It was such a strong blue. With colored diamonds, the color is really, really important. And it is the boron that is the trace element that gets mixed up with the carbon that makes a diamond blue. And there's a grading system that goes along with colored diamonds. You have a fancy color, you have a fancy intense, fancy deep, fancy dark, and fancy vivid. That is the highest grade you can get for a coloured diamond. And the Blue Moon, 12 carat, was internally flawless and it was a fancy, vivid blue diamond. Really, really rare and quite extraordinary. And the fact that it was recently found too, that was what made it even more exciting. So when the Blue Moon came up for auction in Geneva in 2015 it wasn't surprising that it made a world record price for any gemstone and any diamond sold at auction for 33 million pounds. It was bought by a Hong Kong gentleman and he named the diamond after his daughter Josephine so it is now called the Blue Moon of Josephine.