Elmwood's puts a £2m high estimate on an 8.03-carat blue
The pear-shaped Fancy Light Blue comes from a Glasgow collector and carries a £1.5m low estimate. The house says only two blue diamonds above eight carats have been offered at UK auction before, in 1865 and 2008.
By The Auctions Desk
What changed
A blue goes up. Elmwood's will offer an 8.03-carat Fancy Light Blue diamond ring in London on 1 October. The estimate is £1.5m to £2m and the consignor is a collector in Glasgow.
What it means
- If you buy coloured diamonds: A pear cut at this weight rarely reaches a UK saleroom. The range is wide enough that the result will set a reference rather than follow one.
- If you value for insurance: No grading laboratory is named anywhere in the released material, so the Fancy Light Blue call rests on the auctioneer's own description.
- What this is not: A record. The stone is far smaller than the UK precedents the house itself cites, and nothing has been sold yet.
Key figures
| High estimateElmwood's Fine Jewellery, London, 1 October 2026 | £2m |
|---|---|
| Low estimate | £1.5m |
| Fancy Light Blue, pear cut | 8.03 ct |
| Idol's Eye, the 1865 precedent | 70.21 ct |
Source: Elmwood's statement carried by PA Media, 22-23 September 2026 · sale date confirmed at elmwoods.co.uk, read 23 September 2026
The stone and its setting
Pear cut, 8.03 carats. The centre stone is a pear-shaped Fancy Light Blue diamond of 8.03 carats, set within concentric borders of round brilliant-cut pink and white diamonds.
Consigned from Glasgow. Elmwood's says the ring comes from a Scottish collector. The house names neither the consignor, nor a grading laboratory, nor a reserve.
| Stone | Weight | Sale | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Idol's Eye | 70.21 ct | Christie's, London | 1865 |
| Wittelsbach Diamond | not stated in the release | Sotheby's, London | 2008 |
| This ring's centre stone | 8.03 ct | Elmwood's, London | 1 October 2026 |
Notes on this table
The count belongs to the auctioneer. Elmwood's says this will be only the third blue diamond above eight carats ever offered at UK auction, and the largest pear-shaped example. The claim is reproduced with its author named, and two centuries of UK saleroom records were not independently reconstructed; nothing here confirms or disputes it.
The Wittelsbach's weight is not printed. because the release does not carry it, and a figure not read in a source fetched here does not go in a table.
The estimate is a range, not a price. £1.5m to £2m is a 33% spread between the two ends, so a result anywhere inside it tells you little.
The house makes a rarity claim
Third above eight carats. Elmwood's says only two blue diamonds above eight carats have previously been offered at auction in the United Kingdom. It calls this the largest pear-shaped example.
Two precedents named. It names the 70.21-carat Idol's Eye, sold at Christie's in London in 1865. The second is the Wittelsbach Diamond, sold at Sotheby's in London in 2008.
Kendrick calls it rare. Joe Kendrick, Elmwood's head of sale, calls the stone “an extraordinary rarity in its own right” and says the house expects wide interest.
Why blue stones are scarce
Boron does it. Elmwood's attributes the colour to trace amounts of boron taken into the crystal structure, which is the standard explanation for blue in a diamond.
Three sources named. The release gives India and Brazil as the historic sources and South Africa's Cullinan mine as the modern one. No origin is claimed for this stone.
What to watch
- 1 October 2026Elmwood's Fine Jewellery sale, London, 2pm GMT, and the result against the £1.5m to £2m range.
- 23, 24 and 29 September 2026Elmwood's three earlier jewellery sales, which set the house's run-rate into this lot.
- After the saleWhether a grading report is published alongside the result, which the pre-sale material does not carry.
The story so far
Go deeper
What would change this call
A withdrawn lot, or a grading report. The estimate rests on a colour grade nobody has published; a named laboratory report, or the lot's disappearance from the catalogue, would change what this article is about.
What 'Fancy Light Blue' commits an auctioneer to
Fancy Light Blue is a grade, not an adjective. In the standard coloured-diamond scale it sits at the pale end of the blue range, below Fancy Blue, Fancy Intense and Fancy Vivid, and the steps between those grades are worth multiples rather than percentages. That is why the laboratory that issued the grade matters at least as much as the carat weight: an 8.03-carat stone graded Fancy Light Blue by one laboratory and Fancy Blue by another is, for pricing purposes, two different stones. The material released for this lot names the grade and the weight but not the laboratory, so a buyer reading the estimate cannot yet check the one number the estimate is built on. That is normal at the announcement stage and is usually resolved in the catalogue entry; it is noted here because the price range has been published and the evidence for it has not.
Method
The figures in this article come from PA Media's report of Elmwood's announcement, read from the raw bytes of two independent carriers on 23 September 2026: STV News, timestamped 22 September 2026 at 23:03 and last updated 23 September at 07:25, and Perspective Media, timestamped 23 September 2026 at 00:05. Both carry identical wording, which is what a wire copy looks like rather than two independent verifications, and this article treats them as one source read twice. Each carries the 8.03-carat weight, the Fancy Light Blue grade, the pear shape, the £1.5m to £2m estimate, the 1 October London sale, the Glasgow consignor, the two named UK precedents with their dates, the boron explanation and Joe Kendrick's quoted remarks. Neither carries a lot number, a laboratory name, a reserve or a catalogue link. The sale itself was confirmed at the primary: elmwoods.co.uk was fetched directly on 23 September and its own upcoming-auctions listing carries '1ST OCTOBER 2026 2PM GMT — Fine Jewellery', alongside sales on 23, 24 and 29 September. The catalogue behind that listing is rendered in JavaScript and returned no lot data to a static fetch, so the lot itself was not read at the house's own site and no lot number is printed here. Archive check against content/articles.json, one term per grep: 'Elmwood' returns 1 hit, this paper's 26 August 2026 report of the house's 19 August sale — same entity, different sale and different period, so this is advanced coverage of a house we already follow, not a repeat; '8.03' returns 1 hit, which reads $68.03 inside a July gold article and is unrelated; 'Idol' and 'Wittelsbach' return 0 each.
Sources
- Rare blue diamond expected to fetch up to £2 million at UK auction, STV News (PA Media copy) 22 September 2026
- Rare blue diamond could fetch up to £2 million at auction, Perspective Media (PA Media copy) 23 September 2026
- Upcoming auctions, Elmwood's — Fine Jewellery, 1 October 2026, 2pm GMT 23 September 2026