Appreciation | World Legendary Diamonds: The First Rose Diamond

In March 1978, a Premier mine in South Africa discovered a raw diamond weighing 353.9 carats. For safety reasons, the discovery of this diamond was followed by a two month lockdown. After announcing the disclosure of this diamond, the media began to speculate on its whereabouts and there were numerous speculations.

At that time, Princess Caroline of Monaco was about to get married, and it was said that her father, Prince Rainier of Monaco, was preparing to purchase this diamond as a wedding gift for his daughter; Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Empire was also preparing for his coronation, so he planned to purchase this diamond... However, in the end, this diamond was purchased by William Goldberg from his partners in South Africa - Rose and Joe Mouw.

This diamond took 385 hours to finely cut and polished, resulting in three diamonds named after Mrs. Rose Mouw.

The largest is a pear shaped diamond weighing 137.02 carats, certified by GIA as D-color and flawless clarity, making it the fifth largest pear shaped diamond in the world and named the First Rose Diamond or Big Rose; Next is a pear shaped diamond weighing 31.48 carats, certified as D color and Flawless clarity, named Little Rose; The smallest one is named Baby Rose, a 2.11 carat diamond with the same color and clarity as D and Flawless.

In 1979, the first rose diamond was purchased by an anonymous buyer at an unknown price. Shortly thereafter, Little Rose was sold, and the youngest Baby Rose was awarded Rose Mouw in recognition of her contributions to these three diamonds.

Later, Robert Mouawad collected the first rose diamond and reportedly sold it to the King of Saudi Arabia.