HKD 1.8 million tops Poly Auction's Hong Kong jewellery sale
A Van Cleef and Arpels sapphire and diamond necklace led the 6 October High Jewelry and Important Watches sale. Burmese ruby and cabochon sapphire earrings cleared their high estimate by more than twice.
By The Gemstones Desk
What changed
Coloured stones took the top. A Van Cleef and Arpels sapphire and diamond necklace sold for HKD 1.8 million at Poly Auction's Hong Kong sale on 6 October. It narrowly beat its high estimate.
What it means
- If you buy Burmese goods: A pair of ruby and sapphire earrings estimated to HKD 350,000 took HKD 756,000. The estimate was wrong, not the demand.
- If you hold signed jewellery: A Van Cleef ruby suite went below its own low estimate in the same room on the same day. The name is not carrying everything.
- If you consign jadeite: One triple-hoop necklace clearing inside its range is a thin read. The HKD 25 million lot previewed on 29 September is absent from the top five.
- What this is not: A sale total. Poly Auction has published no aggregate, lot count or sell-through rate, and five named lots are not a market.
Key figures
| Top price, Van Cleef sapphire necklace$235,488; beat its high estimate | HKD 1.8m |
|---|---|
| Ruby and sapphire earringsCC division, 756,000/350,000 | 2.16 times |
| Van Cleef ruby suitebelow its HKD 860,000 low estimate | HKD 840,000 |
| Lots the report namesFiveno sale total published | |
Source: Prices and estimates for Poly Auction's High Jewelry and Important Watches sale of 6 October 2026, as reported 8 October
A sapphire necklace led
One point eight. The Van Cleef and Arpels necklace of oval-cut sapphires and circular-cut diamonds took HKD 1.8 million. Rapaport reports that as $235,488, the sale's highest price.
Margin not published. The report says it narrowly beat its high estimate but does not give that estimate, so the margin cannot be stated here.
| Lot | Estimate | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Van Cleef and Arpels oval sapphire and diamond necklace | not published | HKD 1,800,000 ($235,488) |
| Burmese jadeite triple-hoop necklace, pear diamonds | HKD 800,000-1.2m | HKD 900,000 ($114,686) |
| Van Cleef and Arpels oval ruby necklace and earrings | HKD 860,000-1.2m | HKD 840,000 ($107,040) |
| Burmese ruby 31.80ct and cabochon sapphire 31.33ct earrings | HKD 250,000-350,000 | HKD 756,000 ($96,337) |
| Gubelin Burmese sapphire earrings, 3.05ct and 3.23ct | HKD 300,000-500,000 | HKD 456,000 ($58,106) |
Notes on this table
The top lot's own high estimate is not published in the report, so the phrase 'narrowly beating its high estimate' cannot be quantified and no multiple is printed for it. The 2.16 times on the ruby and sapphire earrings is Carat Capital's own division against the high estimate and is printed with its terms: 756,000 divided by 350,000 is 2.16 times the high estimate, which is 116% above it. The Van Cleef ruby suite sold below its low estimate, which the table shows rather than describes.
The earrings cleared widest
Seven fifty-six thousand. Burmese ruby and cabochon sapphire earrings made HKD 756,000 against an estimate of HKD 250,000 to HKD 350,000.
Two point one six. Carat Capital's division gives 2.16 times the high estimate, which is 116% above it.
Two Burmese species. The pair carries 31.80 carats of oval-cut Burmese rubies and 31.33 carats of Burmese cabochon sapphires, with rectangular and circular-cut diamonds.
Not every lot cleared
Below the low. A Van Cleef and Arpels ruby necklace and earring set made HKD 840,000 against an estimate of HKD 860,000 to HKD 1.2 million.
Two inside range. The jadeite triple-hoop necklace made HKD 900,000 and the Gubelin sapphire earrings HKD 456,000, each inside its own published band.
A preview lot is missing
Twenty-five million absent. Carat Capital previewed a 39-bead Burmese jadeite necklace at Poly carrying an HKD 25 million high estimate on 29 September.
The report is silent. It does not appear among the five top lots of the 6 October sale. Whether it was not offered or did not sell is not stated.
What to watch
- Within weeksWhether Poly Auction publishes a sale total, lot count or sell-through rate for the 6 October sale.
- Within weeksWhether the 39-bead jadeite necklace previewed on 29 September reappears in a later Poly catalogue.
- Hong Kong autumn seasonWhether Burmese ruby and sapphire lots keep clearing above estimate at other Hong Kong houses.
The story so far
Go deeper
What would change this call
A published sale total showing a weak sell-through, which would make five strong named lots the exception rather than the read. A report that names only the top five jewels cannot distinguish a firm sale from a thin one with a good top end.
Why a top-five list is weak evidence
An auction house's own summary of its best lots is selected, not sampled. It tells you the ceiling and nothing about the floor, because unsold lots and lots that cleared below estimate are not the material a house promotes. Three specific limits apply here. There is no sell-through rate, so the proportion of the book that found buyers is unknown. There is no aggregate, so the five named prices cannot be set against the sale's size. And the figures quoted are hammer prices as reported, with buyer's premium on top, so what a buyer paid is higher than any number here. The one piece of genuine information in a list like this is internal contradiction: when a signed suite goes below its low estimate in the same room where an unsigned pair of earrings doubles its high, the useful read is about which category the room wanted, not about whether the sale was good.
Method
Rapaport's report was fetched to raw bytes with a browser identity, HTTP 200, 224,882 bytes, saved to newsroom/sources/2026-10-09/poly.html, and every figure was read out of the article's own body paragraphs rather than from a whole-page sweep, because the page carries recirculation rails whose figures belong to other stories. Raw-byte grep counts stated, each 1 hit: '1.8 million', '235,488', '900,000', '114,686', '840,000', '107,040', '756,000', '96,337', '456,000', '58,106', 'October 6'; '31.80' 3 hits and '31.33' 11 hits, both resolved by reading the sentence rather than by counting. Estimates were bound to their own lots by reading each price-and-estimate pair as a single block in sequence, not by pattern-matching numbers across a flattened page. The 2.16 times figure is Carat Capital's own division and is printed with its terms. Archive check, searched in website/content/articles.json, the archive of record: '235,488' 0 hits. 'Poly Auction' 3 string hits in 1 article, opened and read in full: twenty-five-million-for-thirty-nine-beads of 29 September 2026. PERIOD AND EVENT NAMED ON BOTH SIDES: ours 2026-09-29 covers a preview of a 39-bead jadeite necklace with an HKD 25 million high estimate | this item covers the results of Poly Auction's High Jewelry and Important Watches sale held 6 October 2026 - SAME HOUSE, PREVIEW PREVIOUSLY, RESULTS NOW, DIFFERENT SALE AND PERIOD, so ADVANCED, not a repeat. The preview lot's absence from this sale's top five is reported as an absence rather than explained, and the report's silence on it is stated.