Last month in Geneva, Switzerland, the prestigious Sotheby’s auction house announced the record-breaking sale of an exceptionally rare 7.03 carat blue diamond of flawless clarity.

Of all the fancy colored diamonds in the world, blue diamonds are said to be the rarest. Only a handful or so are believed to exist. Their blue color, whether soft and watery like the record-breaker of last month or bold and striking like the Hope Diamond, is attributed to the presence of the element boron during the gemstone’s formation.

A Sotheby’s employee displays the 7.03 carat flawless blue diamond, mounted in a platinum ring.

After an extremely suspenseful and hectic auction, during which the bid bounced back and forth between two determined bidders over the telephone for fifteen minutes, the diamond sold to a secret buyer for a staggering 10.5 million Swiss francs, equal to $9.49 million in American currency. This sets a new world record as the highest per-carat price ever paid for a gemstone, at $1,349,752 per carat.

By odd coincidence, this announcement comes just a couple months before the debut of Diamond Nexus Labs’ newest elegant colored diamond simulant gemstone: the Glacial Ice, a soft blue diamond simulant extremely similar in color to the diamond recently sold at Sotheby’s. While this new gemstone has been in development for some time, we are intrigued that its release is going to be occurring so soon after this historic auction.

Keep an eye on our blog for the anticipated release of the Glacial Ice gemstones later this summer!