Jewish Diamond Dealer Isaac Wolf Welches on $83M ‘Pink Star’
Sotheby’s auction house said it acquired the “Pink Star” diamond, which had fetched a world-record price in November, after its buyer couldn’t pay and defaulted.
New York-based diamond cutter Isaac Wolf outbid three rivals last November to pay 76.3 million Swiss francs ($83.02 million) for the flawless pink diamond in an auction guaranteed by Sotheby’s.
In a post-earnings conference call, the auction house said it reversed the related commission revenue as a result of the buyer default and recorded the pink diamond in inventory at a value of about $72 million.
“We are currently in discussions with the buyer, while also considering other alternatives,” Patrick McClymont, Sotheby’s CFO said on the call with analysts. “In the meantime, we are quite comfortable with our valuation, and see real value in owning the diamond at this price.”
The world-record price for the diamond, which had been renamed “The Pink Dream” after Wolf acquired it, had included a “buyer’s premium,” or commission fees. The diamond’s pre-sale estimate was $61 million.
The 59.60-carat Pink Star was the main attraction at Sotheby’s November jewels sale in Geneva, which was the highest jewelry sale total for a single auction in history – $199.5 million.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO