Thursday, May 7, 2009

Graff Jewellers Purchases 493-Carat Letseng Legacy Diamond

Letseng_legacy_493_caratGem Diamonds and its partner, the Lesotho government sold the Letseng Legacy 493-carat diamond to Graff Jewelers for $10.4 million. This rough diamond, the 18th-largest diamond every found, was discovered September 7th at the Letseng-la-Terai Mine in the Kingdom of Lesotho. Graff’s production company, Safdico, acquired the Letseng Legacy diamond and will be responsible for cutting the stone in Antwerp.

Graff Jewellers was also successful a year ago when it purchased the Lesotho Promise 603-carat diamond for $12.4 million from the same diamond mining company. The Letseng diamond mine is famous for production of large, valuable diamonds.

Gem Diamonds recently announced that they are doubling the size of the Lesotho mining operations and expects to discover more large (over 100 carats) diamonds. Three of the twenty largest diamonds every found were discovered at the Letseng-la-Terai Mine.

The market is hot for large, expensive diamonds and the two-year-old Gems Diamonds Company has already made quite a name for itself with the Lesotho operations as well as mines in southern and central Africa and developing operations in Indonesia.

No comments:

Post a Comment