A diamond, an Aston and a startup are indicative of market madness
In the last twenty-four hours, three extraordinary priced items have hit the headlines. The first, a diamond, sold at Sotheby’s in Geneva for £51.6 million ($83 million); the second, an unrestored Aston Martin made £131,000 ($209,000) at an auction in Harrogate and the third was the reported £1.9 billion ($3 billion) offer made by Facebook for the app Snapchat.
At Sotheby’s, a New York-based diamond cutter named Isaac Wolf set a new record for a gemstone at auction in paying $83 million for a 59.60 carat pink diamond. Previously named the “Pink Star”, Wolf renamed the oval-cut stone the “Pink Dream” after competing with three others in a five minute bidding war.
The Aston Martin DB6 Vantage sold by Bonhams yesterday achieved £131,420 after a bidding war broke out between online buyers and those in the room at the Yorkshire Showground. A “barn find” that had not been used since the 1990s, the car sold to a Chinese buyer against a pre-sale estimate of just £60,000 to £90,000.
Meanwhile, reports that a 23-year old named Evan Spiegel turned down an offer of $3 billion for his Snapchat app from Facebook are equally extraordinary. These are interesting times in all sectors it seems and these are prices most definitely worthy of chronicling.
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yes interesting times , my daughter said face book is for oldies, and snapchat is her thing. RIP Face Book as next generation simply aren’t even logging on..
Lunacy. These prizes are bonkers.
I’ll have that diamond please.