The CEO of Russia’s diamond-mining giant ALROSA said that the company plans to sell a collection of five unique diamonds in November 2017. The starting price for the collection will be USD10 million. The Russian company has the biggest reserves of diamonds estimated in line with JORC standards at 653 million carats. ALROSA’s total resources stand at 1,030 million carats. These gemstones are mined at kimberlite pipes and from placer deposits in Yakutia and the Arkhangelsk region. In 2016, the company extracted a jewelry-quality diamond weighing 207.29 carats. The stone was found at the Zarnitsa pipe of the Udachninsky mining and processing works (MPW) and it is considered one of the largest in the history of the company. The year before, ALROSA extracted a diamond weighing 76.07 carats, which has been appraised at USD430 thousand.

The collection of diamonds that ALROSA is now preparing to put up for sale is created from the Romanov diamond weighing 179 carats, which was found in 2015 at the Nyurbinskaya kimberlite pipe in Yakutia. The collection consists of five diamonds that feature the highest quality Triple Excellent cut. The main diamond of the Dynasty collection has a traditional round form with 57 sides and weighs 51.38 carats. “According to its qualitative characteristics, this stone has no match in Russia’s history. It is the purest and the most expensive diamond ever cut in our country,” ALROSA said.

The second biggest round diamond weighs 16.67 carats and it has been named the Sheremetevs. The Orlovas diamond weighs 5.05 carats and has an oval form. The Vorontsovas diamond is shaped in the form of a pear weighing 1.73 carats. The Yusupovs diamond weighs 1.39 carats. The total starting price for the collection will be 10 million dollars. “In my opinion, at today’s prices, these stones cost no less than 10 million dollars,” ALROSA’s president Sergei Ivanov said. Pavel Vinikhin, the director of Brillanty ALROSA said that the auction for the collection’s sale is planned for November 2017. The auction will be conducted online using ALROSA’s trading platform.