Lucara Diamond Corp.’s 1,109-carat diamond originally weighed about 1,500 carats before it broke into two pieces, the miner said.
A 374-carat stone that Lucara recovered a day after it found the Lesedi La Rona was actually a part of the latter, Lucara’s president and chief executive officer William Lamb told investors.
“So we were looking at something which is most probably closer to 1,500 carats,” Lamb said in an earnings conference call last week.
“Now to identify where that was actually broken – whether it was in placement, whether it was in blasting, whether was in the processing – nobody is really going to be able to tell,” the executive added.
The diamond will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in London on June 29, with an estimated selling price of more than $70 million. A separate 813-carat stone also mined by Lucara sold for $63.1 million this week, a record for a rough diamond.
