Rare Diamond Tied to Marie Antoinette Goes Up for Sale

A rare 10-carat pink diamond with roots in French royalty is set to draw millions when it hits the auction block in New York next month. Believed to have been passed down from French Queen Marie Antoinette to her daughter, this historic, kite-shaped gem has been hidden from public view for decades. Set in a ring designed by jeweler Joel Arthur Rosenthal, it will be a featured item at Christie's "Magnificent Jewels" auction on June 17 at Rockefeller Center, where it's expected to fetch between $3 million and $5 million, per CBS News. Royal accounts claim that on the eve of Antoinette's attempted escape from Paris in 1791, she gave her most prized jewels to her hairdresser for safekeeping, with the hope of retrieving them later.

The jewels ultimately ended up with her daughter, Duchess Marie-Thérèse. While there is no definitive proof, Christie's suggests the pink diamond was among those passed down. The diamond's ownership has changed hands several times across generations, eventually surfacing at an auction in Geneva in 1996. It has not been seen publicly since. Rahul Kadakia, Christie's international head of jewelry, described the stone as a "very special diamond," noting its likely origins in India's Golconda mines and its fancy purple-pink hue. (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)