custom made diamond rings & jewellery

Book a Design Appointment

020 7404 6374

Blog

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Login
    Login Login form

Diamond ring bought for £10 at car boot sale could fetch £350,000 at auction

Posted by on in Icecooldiamonds.com
  • Font size: Larger Smaller
  • Hits: 1538
  • Subscribe to this entry
  • Print

auction

 

A large diamond ring is expected to fetch £350,000 at auction, 30 years after it was purchased by the owner at a car boot sale for £10.00.


The owner believed the "exceptionally sized" stone was costume jewellery when she bought it at West Middlesex Hospital in Isleworth, West London, in the 1980s. The owner was unaware of its true value and wore it for decades without knowing that it was, in fact, a 26ct cushion cut diamond from the 19th century.


The stone is to go under the hammer at Sotheby's on July 7th. The auction house's head of London jewellery department Jessica Wyndham said 'The owner would wear it out shopping, wear it day-to-day. It's a good-looking ring. But it was bought as a costume jewel. No-one had any idea it had any intrinsic value at all. They enjoyed it all this time.
'

'They'd been to quite a few car boot sales over the years. But they don't have any history of collecting antiques and they don't have any history of collecting diamonds. This is a one-off windfall, an amazing find.'

Ms Wyndham said that after around 30 years of wearing the ring, the owners bought it into Sotheby's after a jeweller told them it could have substantial value.
'They came in with the idea that it might be real and they had no idea of its value,' she said.'We had a look and said ...'I think that's a diamond and we got it tested at the Gemological Institute of America.'

She added: 'The majority of us can't even begin to dream of owning a diamond that large.'


Wyndham said the owners, who did not want to be named, are "incredibly excited. Anyone would be in this position. It's a life-changing amount of money. No matter what your background is or what your past experiences have been, it's going to revolutionise someone's life".


The diamond is thought to have been cut in the 19th century but its history and how it arrived at the car boot sale are unknown.

 

0

Joomla! Debug Console

Session

Profile Information

Memory Usage

Database Queries