A giant, flawless pink diamond sold for $26.6 million at auction in Switzerland, according to Sotheby's auction house.
On its website, the "Spirit of the Rose" diamond is described by Sotheby's as a "superb and magnificent fancy vivid purple-pink diamond." "Fancy vivid" is the gemological term for the deepest shade of pink diamonds.
The stone was unearthed in northeastern Russia in July 2017 and originally weighed 27.85 carats.
It took over one year for gemologists to cut and polish the Spirit of the Rose down to its current 14.83 carat size; the gem is the largest pink diamond ever mined in Russia.
The diamond sold to an anonymous buyer, according to Sotheby's.
Sotheby's notes that most colored diamonds "obtain their hues from chemical disturbances in the earth during their formation process" — but not pink ones.
"Instead, the cause of the pink hue is thought to be caused by a distortion in the diamond's crystal lattice, created by intense heat and great pressure after the stone's formation in the earth. This distortion displaces many carbon atoms from their normal positions and alters the qualities of light reflected by the diamond — resulting in us observing the stone as pink."
