Graff Vivid Yellow diamond set to dominate Sotheby’s Geneva auction

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The 100.9 carat diamond is expected to fetch somewhere between $15 million-$25 million  at the auction to take place in the auction giant’s Geneva offices on the shores of Lake Leman in May.

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There are very few people in the world who are fortunate enough to have something of great beauty named after them. Famed London diamond collector Laurence Graff  is one of the few, and he will even be more fortunate to be present when the 100.09-carat Graff Vivid Yellow diamond ring  will be put up for auction next month in Sotheby’s auction rooms in Geneva.

The Graff Vivid Yellow  diamond ring remarkable for its strong “daffodil yellow” color is expected to fetch  between  $15 million to $25 million at auction.

Originally named the Dream Diamond, and weighing 190 carat stone the Graff Vivid Yellow was bought by Graff in 2005 on a trip to Kimberley, South Africa.

Even in its rough state   Graff recalled that the diamond being an intense golden yellow color, making it one of the rarest yellow diamonds he had ever seen in his long career.

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Laurence Graff  wasted no time in sending the Dream Diamond to the Gemological Institute of America in order to certify its natural authenticity, sure in the knowledge that the polished stone which lay within would be crafted into an exceptional diamond, so great was its natural beauty.

Over a period of nine months, in the New York  workshops of renowned diamond cutter Nino Bianco,  the stone was cut and polished extensively, eventually revealing a 109.09 cushion cut carat polished stone diamond cut in all its brilliance, which as  the Graff Vivid Yellow has now been classed  as the largest yellow diamond in the world.

The Graff Vivid Yellow Cushion Cut Diamond made its public debut the following year in no better a setting than  the Kensington Palace in London, when Graff was being awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for the fourth time during his business career.

The staff at Sotheby’s in Geneva will undoubtedly be excited at the prospect of auctioning the  Graff Vivid Yellow Cushion having enjoyed considerable success in the past, even as far as setting a world auction record in 2010 for any diamond sold at auction when they sold the Graff Pink Diamond for $46.2 million at one of their twice yearly auctions.

Also took due to go on the block at the option is another Graff diamond ring, this time dominated by a 103.46 carat  round brilliant cut stone, considered to be one of the largest round shaped diamonds in the world.

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The-Graff-Pink: Top 10 Most Expensive Diamonds Sold at Auction. Photo source : www.mostexpensivelist.com

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Laurence Graff, a totally self-made man who has assembled a fortune of around $4 billion through his exclusive jewelry retailing empire.  Coming from the humble beginnings of Stepney, in East London, which was a hotbed of Jewish immigrants in the thirties, Graff was just a year old when World War Two broke out, and spent much of his early childhood in the London Underground as German bombers blitzed the city.

Growing up in the austere nineteen fifties, the young Graff had no formal business education, beginning his career in the jewelry trade at just fifteen, first opening a small retail shop and later designing and producing jewelry pieces which he wholesaled. By the early nineteen sixties, Graff, then in his mid twenties, had accumulated enough capital to open two exclusive retail outlets, one of them in the highly prestigious Hatton Gardens, regarded as  the epicenter of the UK’s  jewelry industry.

By the seventies, Graff had built himself a tremendous reputation, with clientele seeking out his services from all over the World, extending from the oil sheiks of the Gulf states to the superstars of Hollywood.

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