TL;DR
The Estrela de FURA, a 55.22-carat ruby cut from a 101-carat rough found at FURA's Montepuez mine in Mozambique, sold for $34.8 million at Sotheby's New York in June 2023. In one night it became both the most expensive ruby and the most expensive coloured gemstone ever sold at auction — here is how.
In June 2023, two gemstones walked into a Sotheby's saleroom in New York and walked out with matching $34.8 million price tags. One was the Eternal Pink, a 10.57-carat fancy vivid purplish-pink diamond. The other was a ruby — and it had just become the most expensive ruby, and the most expensive coloured gemstone, ever sold at auction.
The stone was the Estrela de FURA, a 55.22-carat cushion-cut ruby from Mozambique. Less than a year earlier, it was a lump of red crystal — a 101-carat rough that FURA Gems had pulled from the earth on July 21, 2022, at its Montepuez mine.
The 101-carat rough nobody saw coming
When FURA unveiled the rough at the Dubai Diamond Exchange that September, gemologists struggled for comparisons. Daniel Nyfeler, managing director of the Gübelin Gem Lab, said the stone was "relatively free of eye-visible inclusions" and had "extraordinary potential to become one of the largest high-quality faceted rubies ever seen," as documented in the stone's history.
The name is Portuguese — estrela de Fura means "Star of FURA" — a nod to Mozambique's official language and to the Dubai-based mining company that found it.
From rough to record: a master cutter in Bangkok
Cutting a 101-carat ruby is a high-stakes gamble: one wrong facet and millions of dollars evaporate. In January 2023, FURA brought in the French gem house Garaude and 3D engineers from Bellerophon Gemlab to model every option. The cutting itself was done in Bangkok by master cutter Chirapat Yingthawiphiphat.
The result: a 55.22-carat cushion of vivid "pigeon's blood" red with strong fluorescence under ultraviolet light. Sotheby's unveiled the finished stone in Hong Kong that April, then sent it on a world tour — Taipei, Singapore, Geneva, Dubai — before the June 8 Magnificent Jewels sale in New York.
The estimate was given only "on request," though the trade expected more than $30 million. Bidding opened at $21 million, and an anonymous telephone bidder — later confirmed as a private collector from the Middle East — took it home for $34.8 million at Sotheby's. FURA pledged part of the proceeds toward building a training academy in Mozambique.
Why Mozambique changed the ruby map
Here is what makes this record quietly revolutionary. For centuries, the benchmark for the world's finest rubies was one valley: Mogok, in Myanmar (Burma). "Pigeon's blood" red — that deep, saturated red with a whisper of purple — was supposed to be a Burmese birthright.
The Montepuez deposit in northeastern Mozambique was only discovered in 2009. Within a decade it became the most productive gem-quality ruby source on earth, rivalling Burma's finest, as ruby's modern mining history records. Estrela de FURA — a Mozambican stone glowing with pigeon's-blood colour — is the proof that the old monopoly is over.
What actually makes a ruby a ruby
Mineralogically, ruby is simple: red corundum — aluminium oxide coloured by traces of chromium. Pure corundum is colourless; chromium does all the work, creating the red and, as a bonus, making many rubies fluoresce so they glow brighter in sunlight.
The Sanskrit name for ruby is ratnaraj — "king of gems." As GIA's ruby overview notes, rubies can command the highest per-carat price of any coloured stone. They are July's birthstone, and at 9 on the Mohs scale they are second only to diamond in hardness — which is why Burmese warriors once carried them into battle believing they granted invincibility.
Not every red corundum qualifies. Colour is everything: the trade's top grade, "pigeon's blood," is a deep red with a hint of purple. Stones that fall short of the red threshold are classified as pink sapphires — the same mineral, a very different price.
Why are rubies so expensive?
Three things decide a ruby's price: colour, size, and how little has been done to it. Colour comes first — a vivid, saturated red can be worth many times a dull one of the same weight. Size matters exponentially, because clean rough above a few carats is extraordinarily rare.
Treatment is the third variable. Almost all rubies are heat-treated — a standard, permanent, widely accepted practice. But untreated stones of fine colour command large premiums, while fracture-filled or lead-glass-filled rubies sit at the other end of the market. For any significant purchase, ask for a lab report from GIA, Gübelin or SSEF. If you'd like to keep exploring the world of coloured stones, you'll find more stories and pieces at Lumière Gems.
The records it broke
Before Estrela de FURA, the auction record belonged to the Sunrise Ruby: a 25.59-carat Burmese stone, set in a Cartier ring, that sold at Sotheby's Geneva in May 2015 for $32.4 million — $1,266,901 per carat, as GIA records. FURA's stone beat it by more than $2 million while weighing over twice as much, and it still holds the auction record for any single ruby.
And that June night in New York set one more record: it was the first auction in history in which two stones — the ruby and the Eternal Pink diamond — each sold for more than $30 million.
Rubies in the news right now
The ruby market hasn't cooled. This week, Saffronart's Fine Jewels & Silver online auction (October 21–22) features a Burmese ruby and diamond ring in coveted pigeon's-blood colour, estimated at up to $184,000 — a reminder that while record stones make headlines, the collector market for fine rubies runs deep at every level.
From a 101-carat rough in a Mozambican mine to the most expensive coloured gemstone ever auctioned — all in under eleven months. The Estrela de FURA didn't just break a record. It announced that the centre of the ruby world has moved.