Mellon Blue Diamond Sells for $25.6 Million

AFP-Jiji

12:35 JST, November 28, 2025

GENEVA (AFP-Jiji) — The Mellon Blue, a 9.51-carat (1.9-gram) fancy vivid blue diamond formerly owned by the U.S. art collector Bunny Mellon, sold for $25.6 million at auction on Nov. 11.

The diamond was sold by auctioneers Christie’s in Geneva as part of its Magnificent Jewels sale in the Swiss city.

The gem sold for 20,525,000 Swiss francs (U.S. $25,658,000) at the Hotel des Bergues, having been estimated to fetch between 16 and 24 million francs.

Rahul Kadakia, who conducted the sale, said the price was evidence of the “elite appetite amongst collectors for extraordinary and storied gems.”

The stone, set in a serpentine ring, once belonged to Rachel Lambert Mellon, better known as Bunny Mellon, a U.S. horticulturalist, philanthropist and art collector.

“The Mellon Blue is an outstanding stone,” said Max Fawcett, head of jewelry at Christie’s in Geneva.

“More than that, though, it has also become symbolic of a lifestyle of a bygone era — the type only possible with a Gilded Age fortune.”

The brilliant-cut stone is graded as internally flawless.

The diamond was last seen publicly in 2014, when it was auctioned in New York after her death at the age of 103, selling for more than $32 million.

Tobias Kormind, managing director of Europe’s largest online diamond jeweler 77 Diamonds, said in a statement that he was expecting the gem to go for a higher price on Nov. 11.

“Geopolitical tensions … and a weakened Chinese economy that kept many usual buyers away, left the room distinctly cautious,” he said.

“Whether this restraint will ripple through the rest of the Geneva season remains to be seen.”