How much would you pay for a pair of diamond earrings? If you’re the unidentified buyer of Apollo and Artemis, two earrings so valuable they’re named after Greek gods, then the answer is a staggering £45 million (that’s about $AUD78 million).
The ear candy was auctioned off at Sotheby’s Geneva Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels sale this week, where they became the most expensive pair ever sold.
Apollo, the blue diamond, is “the largest internally flawless fancy vivid blue diamond ever to be offered at auction,” Sotheby’s says, and has a grading of 11b – along with just one per cent of diamonds in the world.
The pink diamond, Artemis, is “the most chemically pure” of its kind and is classified as an 11a.
According to the Gemmological Insitute of America (GIA) “no more than three per cent [of diamonds] are classified as coloured diamonds; less than five per cent of those coloured diamonds are predominantly pink,” Forbes reports.
We really, really want one now.