Earlier this week, a 5.5-carat diamond ring sold for over $17 million dollars during Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction in Zurich. The triangular-cut stone, known as Ocean Dream, thanks to its blue-green color, had an estimate of about $9-12 million. It is set into an 18-karat white gold band and surrounded by pink and white diamonds.
Fortune magazine reported that the buyer was an unnamed private client and that the ring took 20 minute to sell.
Max Fawcett, Global Head of Christie’s Jewellery, noted in a statement that this is the second time Ocean Dream has been offered at auction. (t sold for nearly $10 million in 2014, also at Christie’s Geneva.) According to the Smithsonian, it is “one of the eight rarest diamonds in the world.” Ocean Dream was one of seven colored stones in the 2003 exhibition “Splendor of Diamonds” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
The ring comes with a letter issued by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) confirming that it is “the largest Fancy Vivid blue-green diamond of natural color that GIA has examined as of the date of this letter,” which was written on Apr. 10, 2026. The GIA report further details the diamond’s history. It was extracted in central Africa in the 1990s, and in its uncut state weighed nearly 12 carats. The stone’s combination of tone and size is “quite unusual.”
Naturally occurring colored diamonds (all quite rare) exist in a range of colors, with reds and purples being the most rare and yellows being least rare. It ranks SI-1 on the GIA’s clarity scale, meaning that it is “slightly occluded” (imperfections are visible under magnification).
The May 13 sale took place at Zurich’s Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues. It featured a total of 87 lots, including pieces by Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels and brought in a total of $66 million.
