Named for Sir Philip Oppenheimer, a central figure in the De Beers diamond empire who owned the stone for decades, the emerald-cut diamond carries the exceedingly rare "Fancy Vivid" blue grade — a color intensity only a handful of diamonds this size have ever achieved.
His family finally consigned it to auction in 2016, ending decades of private ownership.
An anonymous phone bidder won it in eight minutes for $57.5 million — about $3.93 million per carat, a per-carat record at the time for any diamond sold at auction.
It remains the most expensive blue diamond ever sold, a title that has survived nearly a decade of subsequent record attempts.
Ad space