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A diamond the size of a tennis ball that's worth over £53 million is up for auction
Donald Bowers/Getty Images for Sotheby's
The biggest diamond to have been recovered in over 100 years will be auctioned on June 29 at Sotheby's in London, where it is expected to sell for more than $70 million (£53 million).
The 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona is about the same size as a tennis ball, measuring 66.4 x 55 x 42 millimetres, according to a Sotheby's blog post. Lesedi La Rona means "our light" in Tswana, the language spoken in Botswana, where the diamond was found.
The white rough diamond was sourced at the Lucara Diamond Corporation's Karowe mine in November 2015, and could be as much as 3 billion years old, a press release from Sotheby's says.
"The Lesedi La Rona has a fascinating structure," diamond expert Tobias Kormind of 77Diamonds.com said in a press release from the jewellery company. "Two clear sides where pieces have come off during the stone’s ascent from the earth’s core have created windows, allowing experts to look clearly inside the diamond to determine the purity and shape of the diamonds that can be created from it."
Deemed to be of excellent quality, the translucent gem could be cut to make one of the world's most sizeable and diamonds, according to the Gemological Institute of America. For this reason, Kormind predicts that the gem will sell for over $100 million (£75 million).
Lesedi La Rona — which is on view to the public at Sotheby's until its sale on June 29 — is second only in size to the 3,106.75-carat Cullinan Diamond, found in a mine near Pretoria in South Africa in 1905. The stone was cut into nine diamonds that are featured in the Crown Jewels, which can be seen at the Tower of London.
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