Tennis ball-sized ‘diamond in the rough’ too big to sell

Industry insiders say Lucara may have to cut the 1,109-carat stone to find a buyer, following Sotheby’s failed auction last year

Hidden sparkle: A model displays the ‘Lesedi La Rona’.

In the mysterious world of diamond mining, it turns out that some stones are too big to sell.

Canada’s Lucara Diamond Corp will have to cut its tennis ball-sized rough diamond to find a buyer, industry insiders say, following Sotheby’s failed auction for the world’s largest uncut stone last summer.

It’s not the ending that William Lamb wanted for his 1,109-carat stone, named ‘Lesedi La Rona’, or ‘Our Light’ in the national language of Botswana where it was mined. “It’s only the second stone recovered in the history of humanity over 1,000 carats. Why would you want to polish it?,” said Lucara’s chief executive.

“The stone in the rough form contains untold potential...As soon as you polish it into one solution, everything else is gone.” Mr. Lamb had gambled that ultra-rich collectors, who buy and sell precious art works for record-breaking sums at auction, would do the same with a diamond in the raw. The unprecedented bet failed.

Bidding for the 2.5 to 3 billion year old stone stalled at $61 million — short of the $70 million reserve. “When is a diamond too big? I think we have found that when you go above 1,000 carats, it is too big — certainly from the aspect of analysing the stones with the technology available,” said Panmure Gordon mining analyst Kieron Hodgson.

“At the end of the day, it’s about understanding what the stone can produce. And the industry now doesn’t work on hunches as much as it used to 20-30 years ago.”

An arcane business, the diamond industry has no spot market trading, no guarantee that ‘roughs’ will yield any value, and a punishing grading system that can dramatically swing values.

Capricious customers

Stones in the hundreds of carats come with additional risk, from the multi-million-dollar price tags and cutting process that can take months or years, to capricious customer demand.

There is a “very, very small universe” of companies with the skill, money and network to polish and sell the Lesedi, which will likely take two to four days for the first laser cut, said Mr. Lamb.

Mr. Lamb, a former De Beers executive, says it’s unlikely Lucara can sell the stone for its desired price and polishing the Lesedi itself is risky.

Lucara, which installed a Large Diamond Recovery machine, using X-ray transmission sensors (XRT), recovered the Lesedi, an 813-carat and 374-carat stone over two days. A Dubai trading company paid a record $63 million for Lucara’s 813-carat ‘Constellation’, while Graff bought the 374-carat stone for $17.5 million.