Lucara's 2nd Exception Diamond Sale Nets $25 Million

Diamond company Lucara held a tender for extra-large rough diamonds yesterday, and successfully sold the lot of them, pocketing nearly $25 million in revenues, the Wall Street Journal reports. Lucara brought 16 big stones to auction, amounting to over a thousand carats in total, and was paid just over $24,000 per carat. The precious gems were harvested from the Karowe diamond mine in Botswana.

The rough diamonds which was sold for the highest weighed no less than 135 carats and garnered approximately $6.37 million. Three other stones that went on the auction block were also purchased for sums in excess of $2.5 million each.

Lucara plans to conduct another tender of large stones in the third quarter of the year, but on a much larger scale. At that public sale, up to 80,000 carats will be up for grabs, including 30 of which weighing more than 10 carats, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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