There is something slightly absurd about a ring costing $50 million.
At that point, you're not really talking about jewellery in the usual sense. You're talking about a diamond that has become an object of history, a collector's piece, a status symbol and, occasionally, a very expensive thing to put on your finger.
Some of the most expensive rings in the world have sold for more than houses. Some contain diamonds that have had famous owners. Others are valuable simply because the particular combination of colour, size and quality is so difficult to find.
And then of course there are some rings that have survived revolutions, passed through royal hands, and been stolen more often than actually worn. With pieces like these, the diamond is only part of what you're buying into. The story comes with it.
Table of Contents- Top 10 Most Expensive Rings in the World
- What Makes Some Rings the Most Expensive in the World?
- Most Expensive Engagement Rings Ever Owned by Celebrities
- Most Expensive Wedding Rings in the World
- Can Lab Grown Diamond Rings Be Luxury Pieces?
- Size is not what makes these rings so expensive.
- Colour, rarity, clarity and provenance matter just as much as the carat weight.
- The most expensive diamond rings carry rare fancy-coloured diamonds at their centre.
- Auction prices aren't permanent market values. A documented sale tells you what someone paid on one particular day.
- Famous owners, royal connections and a well-documented history can add another layer of value to an already rare diamond.
- The setting, design and craftsmanship all contribute to what a finished ring is worth.
- The same thinking applies to luxury lab grown diamond jewellery too. Cutting and design drive the value.
Top 10 Most Expensive Rings in the World
When we look at the top 10 most expensive rings in the world, the price is just the beginning.
There are enormous diamonds here, certainly. But there are also surprisingly small ones, extraordinary colours, famous names and diamonds with histories that go back generations.
Here are ten of the diamonds and rings that have reached remarkable prices.
| Ring | Diamond | Carat Weight | Auction Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Pink Star | Fancy Vivid Pink | 59.60 | $71.2 million |
| The Oppenheimer Blue | Fancy Vivid Blue | 14.62 | $57.5 million |
| The Blue Moon of Josephine | Fancy Vivid Blue | 12.03 | $48.5 million |
| The Graff Pink | Pink | 24.78 | $46.2 million |
| The Wittelsbach-Graff | Historic Blue Diamond | – | — |
| The Pink Promise | Fancy Vivid Pink | 5.09 | $32.5 million |
| The Winston Blue | Fancy Vivid Blue | – | $23.8 million |
| The Chopard Blue | Blue, Internally Flawless | 9 | $16.26 million |
| The Bulgari Blue | Fancy Intense blue | 10.95 | $15.7 million |
| The Tiffany Yellow Diamond | Yellow | 82.48 | Not sold |
Auction prices are historical sale prices, not current valuations.
The Pink Star Diamond Ring
The world's most famous Fancy Vivid Pink diamond is better known simply as the Pink Star. In 2017, this 59.60-carat diamond sold for $71.2 million at a Sotheby's Hong Kong auction, making it the most expensive gemstone ever sold at auction.
The rough started at 132.5 carats. Two years of cutting to get to the finished diamond. More than half the weight gone, but the intensity doubled.
And that's why the Pink Star is considered one of the most extraordinary coloured diamonds in the world even today.
The Oppenheimer Blue Diamond Ring
The Oppenheimer Blue sold for a whopping $57.5 million, despite being much smaller than the Pink Star at just 14.62 carats.
Why? Mainly the colour.
This is a Fancy Vivid Blue diamond, and not a modest one either. It once belonged to Sir Philip Oppenheimer, former chairman of De Beers, and that ownership history is doing a fair amount of work in the final price.
Natural blue diamonds are rare to begin with. Finding one with genuinely strong colour narrows things further. Finding one that's also large, clean and well cut is a different problem entirely, and the Oppenheimer Blue happens to check every box at once.
The Graff Pink Diamond Ring
The Graff Pink sold for $46.2 million at Sotheby's Geneva in 2010. It was 24.78 carats at the time and had previously belonged to Harry Winston.
Then Laurence Graff bought it.
And decided to have it recut.
That meant sacrificing some of the weight. For most diamond buyers, that sounds like the last thing you'd want to do. With a diamond like this, though, the question isn't simply how much you can keep. It's what you can make of it.
The Blue Moon of Josephine Ring
A 12.03-carat Fancy Vivid Blue diamond, the Blue Moon, sold for $48.5 million at Sotheby's Geneva in 2015, achieving the highest price per carat ever paid for a gemstone at auction.
Joseph Lau bought it.
Then he renamed it the Blue Moon of Josephine, after his daughter.
That may be the nicest thing about the whole story. After all the talk of auction records, rarity and millions of dollars, the diamond ended up with a family name.
The diamond itself is remarkable. Its colour, clarity and size put it in very rare company.
The Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond Ring
The Wittelsbach-Graff is a difficult diamond to talk about without talking about its past. It carries several centuries of history with it.
Once part of the Bavarian Crown Jewels, it was later owned by Laurence Graff.
Then came the controversial bit: Graff had it recut, changing the diamond's weight and proportions.
This irked some people. Altering a diamond that had been treasured for centuries just didn't feel right. Then again, beauty and perfection are in the eyes of the beholder.
The Pink Promise Diamond Ring
The Pink Promise weighs 5.09 carats and is graded Fancy Vivid Pink. It sold for $32.5 million at Christie's Hong Kong in 2017.
The Pink Promise isn't valuable because it happens to be enormous. The colour is doing a lot of the work here, along with its clarity and rarity.
A diamond doesn't have to be huge to be extremely valuable.
The Winston Blue Diamond Ring
The Winston Blue is a pear-shaped Fancy Vivid Blue diamond that sold for $23.8 million at Christie's Geneva in 2014.
Harry Winston is a familiar name for anyone interested in extraordinary jewellery. The house has handled some remarkable diamonds over the years.
But the name isn't really what makes this one interesting.
It's the blue.
A vivid, saturated blue in a diamond this size is unusual enough to make you stop and look before you get around to asking who made the ring.
The Chopard Blue Diamond Ring
This 9-carat internally flawless blue diamond is set with white diamonds around it. It made headlines when it sold for $16.26 million at Christie's Geneva in 2014.
What stands out about the Chopard Blue, apart from its stunning blue colour, is its setting, which carries a lot of presence of its own.
The Bulgari Blue Diamond Ring
At 10.95 carats, this Fancy Intense Blue diamond sold for $15.7 million at Sotheby's Geneva.
The price tag is only a part of it. Bulgari's brand name holds weight too. For decades the house has approached coloured diamonds this way, folding the diamond into the overall design instead of just mounting it and calling it finished.
You can actually see that in how the setting was built around this one specifically.
The Tiffany Yellow Diamond Ring
Tiffany's owned this diamond the entire time. It's never once changed hands, which is unusual for something this famous.
What sits in their vault now is 82.48 carats.
Go back to 1877 though, when it first came out of a South African mine, and the rough weighed 128.54 carats, quite a bit more than what survived the cutting.
What Makes Some Rings the Most Expensive in the World?
Try putting all these rings in one room and there isn't an obvious formula.
The biggest isn't always the most expensive. The oldest isn't necessarily the most valuable. And a famous jewellery house can't make an ordinary diamond rare just by putting its name on the box.
Many factors have to come together.
Diamond Quality (The 4Cs)
Let's start with the 4Cs. Carat often gets confused with size, but it's not the same. Two diamonds weighing one carat can look very different on the hand.
Colour describes how much colour you can see in a diamond. White diamonds are graded from D through to more visibly yellowish grades. With a fancy-coloured diamond, the rules change. A strong pink or blue can be the reason the diamond is valuable in the first place.
Clarity grades run from IF and VVS down through VS and SI, and broadly, the higher up that scale you go, the fewer visible characteristics show up inside or on the diamond.
Cut confuses people constantly, and that's understandable. Shape and cut aren't the same either. Facets, angles, how deep the diamond goes, whether the proportions actually let light bounce back up at you instead of sneaking out through the bottom, that's cut.
Two diamonds with matching certificates, same carat, same colour, same clarity grade, can sit next to each other and one just has more life in it.
Looking at the actual diamond instead of the paperwork is the only way to understand the cut.
Rare Fancy-Coloured Diamonds
White diamonds and coloured diamonds play by rather different rules.
With a white diamond, you're usually looking for as little visible colour as possible. With a pink or blue diamond, you may be paying precisely because of the colour.
And the really good ones are hard to find.
A strong natural colour is rare. A strong colour in a larger diamond is rarer. Add good clarity and suddenly there aren't many diamonds left that you could put beside it and call comparable.
That's how a relatively small coloured diamond can end up costing far more than a much larger white one.
It's not just about having more diamond.
It's having a rare one.
Historical Significance and Provenance
The certificate tells you what the diamond is.
It doesn't tell you where it's been.
That can be a big deal with famous diamonds.
The Oppenheimer Blue carries Sir Philip Oppenheimer's name because he owned it before it ever reached auction, and that ownership still colours how people talk about the diamond decades later.
Same goes for the Tiffany Yellow Diamond, tied to one jewellery house for well over a century now, long enough that the diamond and the name basically became the same story.
You can't add that sort of history later.
It's either there or it isn't.
Craftsmanship and Luxury Brands
Then there's the actual ring.
A diamond doesn't float on the finger by itself. Someone has designed the setting, made it, finished it and worked out how to make the diamond sit properly in it.
And you notice when this is done badly.
The best settings don't make you think about engineering at all. Everything just belongs together.
That's why Graff, Bulgari, Cartier and Harry Winston sit at the top. It's about the jewellery they make, not simply the diamonds.
The value of a finished ring is therefore more than the value of the loose diamond.
Most Expensive Engagement Rings Ever Owned by Celebrities
Celebrity engagement rings work on a different kind of appeal, mostly because everyone already knows exactly whose hand it was on.
Take Mariah Carey. Her emerald-cut from James Packer is said to run 35 carats and land somewhere around $10 million.
Or Elizabeth Taylor's Krupp Diamond, a 33.19-carat Asscher-cut Richard Burton gave her, which didn't actually sell until Christie's auctioned it in 2011 for $8.8 million.
Beyoncé's emerald-cut from Jay-Z sits around 18 carats and roughly $5 million by most estimates.
And then there's Kim Kardashian's 15-carat cushion-cut from Kanye West, valued near $4.5 million, gone now after that 2016 Paris robbery.
One caveat with celebrity rings: the prices are often estimates. Unlike an auction sale, there isn't necessarily a public receipt telling you what was paid.
Still, look at the rings themselves and there is a common thread.
The diamond is usually big enough to be the entire point.
The setting can afford to be quiet.
For anyone searching for the most expensive engagement rings, these celebrity pieces make for an interesting comparison with the auction records. The numbers aren't always directly comparable, but the diamonds themselves certainly are worth looking at.
Most Expensive Wedding Rings in the World
Wedding bands have a strange disadvantage.
They don't get the proposal.
There is no box being opened. No dramatic reveal. No photograph of someone putting the ring on for the first time.
They just stay.
And some of them stay rather beautifully.
Beyoncé's eternity band has been estimated at around $5 million. Grace Kelly's wedding band from Prince Rainier is one of the best-known royal wedding rings, although its significance comes from the history surrounding it as much as the diamonds.
Graff, Cartier and Harry Winston have also created bespoke diamond bands that run into the millions.
The most expensive wedding rings aren't necessarily giant solitaires. Some are made entirely from rows of diamonds.
In a way, that's a different kind of extravagance.
Can Lab Grown Diamond Rings Be Luxury Pieces?
Yes. And the more useful question is probably what we actually mean by luxury in the first place.
A diamond can be lab grown and still be beautifully cut. A ring can still have an interesting design. The setting can still be made properly. The proportions can still be considered down to the smallest detail.
Those things don't disappear because of where the diamond was grown.
Aukera's approach is to treat the diamond and the jewellery around it as one piece. Aukera builds around lab grown diamonds with its own cutting and design work, including the Aukera Orchid™, the Aukera Enhanced Hearts & Arrows™ and Aukera Extra Brilliant™ collections.
If you're looking at the collection, you can browse lab grown diamond jewellery, from diamond rings and engagement rings to proposal rings, solitaire rings and fashion rings.
The world's most expensive rings are interesting precisely because they're such extreme examples.
Rare diamonds. Exceptional colour. Serious craftsmanship. Famous names. Sometimes a few centuries of history thrown in.
Most of us will never own a $50 million ring.
Beautiful and expensive just aren't always the same thing. Worth keeping in mind next time a price tag makes headlines.
