Bid for World's largest flawless diamond weighing over 300 carats is just $1

The Golden Canary, which is one of the world’s largest coloured diamonds, will go under the hammer at a Sotheby’s auction in New York in December. The bid for the 303.10-carat yellow diamond will be just $1, since there is no reserve price. The diamond is expected to fetch at least $15 million.   

The Golden Canary, which is deep yellow in colour and is pear shaped, is one of the largest polished diamonds in the world and the largest flawless or internally flawless diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). The diamond boasts a peerless history and provenance. In the early 1980s, a young girl found it in a rubble while playing in her uncle’s backyard in the Democratic Republic of Congo. At that time, miners from the nearby state-owned diamond mine, MIBA, found the diamond to be very bulky and discarded it. 

Little did they know that what they called a rubble could turn out to be an 890-carat rough cut diamond, which was one of the largest rough diamonds in the world. The girl gave the stone to her uncle, who sold it to a local diamond dealer. 

The diamond was first presented to the public in 1984 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in the US. In about five years, the rough diamond was cut into 15 finished stones. Of which, the largest -- a fancy deep brownish-yellow weighing 407.49 carats was formally known as the ‘Incomparable’. It was displayed at several exhibitions around the world. It was finally decided to recut the ‘Incomparable’ to maximise the depth of its colour and improve its shape. After the modifications, the final diamond was named as The Golden Canary.  Yellow diamonds are extremely rare, making up for just 0.006 per cent of all diamonds mined. It’s for the first time the diamond is going up for auction.   

Sotheby’s recently sold the Williamson Pink Star, an extremely rare 11.15-carat pink diamond, for $57.7 million in Hong Kong. 
 

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