TL;DR
The Bulgari Pink — a 24.00-carat Fancy Intense Pink emerald-cut diamond — sat hidden for 70 years and now headlines Christie's Geneva on November 10, 2026, with an estimate of CHF 10–15 million. We explore its provenance, the pressure-formed science behind its rare colour, and why pink diamonds command such extraordinary prices.
A pink diamond sat in a vault for 70 years. Next month, it could sell for 18 million dollars.
On October 9, Christie's announced that The Bulgari Pink — a 24.00-carat Fancy Intense Pink emerald-cut diamond set in a ring by Bulgari — will headline its Magnificent Jewels sale during Autumn Luxury Week in Geneva on November 10, 2026. The estimate: CHF 10–15 million, or roughly US$12–18 million. The stone goes on public view in Geneva from November 5–10 — its first appearance before the wider world in over seven decades. (You can see photographs of the actual ring in Christie's official coverage.)
A stone with a past
The Bulgari Pink comes from the collection of what Christie's calls a distinguished European noble family. It has stayed in private hands for more than 70 years and has never been offered at auction — a combination of size, colour and untouched provenance that tends to bring serious bidders into the room, as Jewellery Outlook reports.
According to family lore, the current owner's great-grandfather bought the rough diamond in India during the 1950s and later entrusted it to Bulgari, which transformed it into the ring seen today. At the time, the Roman jeweller was becoming a destination for the world's most discerning collectors — a natural home for a stone this rare.
The timing is everything. The 1950s were when Rome became the centre of postwar glamour: major Hollywood productions were filming at Cinecittà Studios, and the international stars who followed gave the era its nickname, "Hollywood on the Tiber." Bulgari's boutique on Via Condotti became a meeting point for that crowd — Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer among them. This ring was made in that world.
The science: colour as a scar
Here's the part most people don't know: pink diamonds don't get their colour from chemistry. They get it from pressure. Deep underground, the crystal lattice bends under extreme force, and that structural deformation changes the way the stone interacts with light — the pink is literally a scar left behind.
It's also vanishingly rare. The Bulgari Pink is classified as a Type IIa diamond, a category that makes up fewer than 2% of all gem-quality diamonds. Christie's compares its hue and proportions to the most celebrated historic diamonds, including stones from the legendary Golconda sources.
The emerald cut: a bold choice for a pink diamond
Notice the cut. Most fancy-colour diamonds are cut as brilliants or cushions, because those faceting styles bounce light around and intensify colour. The emerald cut — a step cut with long, flat facets — tends to show body colour less intensely. Achieving a Fancy Intense grade at 24 carats in an emerald cut is therefore all the more remarkable: the rough had to be deeply saturated to begin with, and the cutter had to preserve every bit of it. The refined rectangular step cut is part of what makes this stone so unusual.
Why pink diamonds are having a moment
The mine behind the overwhelming majority of the world's pink diamonds — Australia's Argyle mine — shut down in November 2020 after 37 years of operation. In its lifetime it produced more than 865 million carats of rough diamonds, including nearly all of the world's supply of pink stones. Every pink diamond on earth got rarer overnight — and the market noticed.
How it compares: pink diamonds that made history
To put the Bulgari Pink's estimate in perspective, consider the two most famous pink diamonds ever sold:
The Pink Star — a 59.60-carat oval diamond, the largest internally flawless Fancy Vivid Pink ever graded by the GIA — sold for US$71.2 million at Sotheby's Hong Kong in April 2017, a world record for any gemstone at auction. Mined by De Beers in Botswana in 1999 as a 132.5-carat rough, it took nearly two years to cut. Like the Bulgari Pink, it is a Type IIa diamond.
The Graff Pink — a 24.78-carat Fancy Intense Pink — sold for US$46.2 million at Sotheby's Geneva in November 2010, the previous pink-diamond record. At nearly identical weight to the Bulgari Pink, it is the closest comparable ever sold.
If the Bulgari Pink reaches the top of its estimate, it would land among the most valuable pink diamonds ever auctioned — remarkable for a stone the public has never seen.
The company it keeps in Geneva
The Bulgari Pink isn't the only coloured stone drawing attention this season. As Jeweller Magazine reports, the same Geneva sale will also offer a 14.63-carat David Morris pink diamond — an orangey-pink emerald-cut stone estimated at CHF 2.1 million. Strong company, and a useful yardstick: at roughly seven times that estimate, the Bulgari Pink is in a different league entirely.
14.63-carat David Morris pink diamond — an orangey-pink emerald-cut stone estimated at CHF 2.1 million
Why are pink diamonds so expensive?
Three things compound: geology (only a handful of sources ever produced them, and the biggest is closed), physics (the colour comes from rare lattice deformation, and top grades like Type IIa are exceptionally scarce), and story (provenance and cultural history move bidders as much as carats do). When all three align — as they do here — records follow.
What it teaches us
A gemstone's value is never just about the stone. It's rarity plus beauty plus story — and the Bulgari Pink holds all three in extraordinary measure: a colour formed by geological violence, a grade fewer than one in fifty diamonds achieves, a cut that refuses to flatter, and seventy years of silence in a noble family's vault. We'll be watching Geneva on November 10.
At Lumière Gems, we believe every gemstone has a story worth telling — even the ones that don’t come with an eight-figure estimate. If this one made you see pink diamonds a little differently, then it did its job.