Miners in Angola make a spectacular find: a 170-carat pink diamond. It is said to be the largest of its kind for hundreds of years. With similarly rare stones already selling for astronomical sums, "The Lulo Rose" should also fetch a fortune.
Miners in Angola have unearthed a 170-carat pink diamond. The Australian company Lucapa Diamond Company, which operates the Lulo mine in northeastern Angola, announced that it was probably the largest pink rough diamond discovered worldwide in the past 300 years. It dubbed the diamond "The Lulo Rose" after the mine's name.
This record "continues to show Angola as a major player on the world diamond mining stage," said Mineral Resources Minister Diamantino Azevedo. According to the Angolan government, which is a partner in the Lulo Mine, "The Lulo Rose" is a Type IIa diamond - a category that includes particularly rare and pure stones. "The Lulo Rose" is now to be sold at an international auction.
Although the rough diamond still needs to be cut and polished to reach its full value - a process that can cause a stone to lose half its weight - it is likely to change hands for an astronomical price. Similar pink diamonds have fetched record prices in the past: the 59.6-carat "Pink Star" fetched the previous record price of $71.2 million (currently around 70 million euros) at an auction in Hong Kong in 2017. According to Lucapa, the largest recorded rough diamond in Angola to date was won in the Lulo mine in 2016, the white "Stone of February 4th" with 404 carats.
