$457,700 led Doyle, and an 1890 sapphire pair beat its estimate by 180%

§1A cautious book, and a room that found the gaps in it.

Doyle's Important Jewelry sale in New York was led by a 12.46-carat diamond ring at $457,700, against a high estimate of $350,000. The stone is a cut-cornered step-cut emerald cut, D colour, VS2 clarity, set between tapered baguette diamonds. Rapaport's report of 24 August, which takes the results from Doyle's own website, puts the whole sale above $8 million and records several jewels selling above their top estimates. On the ring alone that is $107,700 more than the house's own ceiling, or 30.8% above it, this desk's arithmetic on the two published figures. Per carat the ring returned $36,733.55.

§2The multiple sits where the headline does not.

The multiple is more useful than the margin, and across the top five it does not fall where the headline puts it. A JAR ring from around 1980, carrying a cushion modified brilliant of 5.78 carats, G colour and VS2, with pave-set rounds, made $165,600 against an $80,000 to $120,000 estimate, 1.38 times the high. A Cartier Mahango Panthere necklace of more than 500 round diamonds weighing about 30 carats made $133,850 against $50,000 to $70,000, which is 1.91 times the high. And a pair of antique earrings from 1890, one holding an oval 4-carat Ceylon sapphire and the other an oval 4.17-carat Kashmir sapphire, each ringed by ten old-mine diamonds, made $140,200 against $30,000 to $50,000. That is 2.80 times the high estimate and 180.4% above it, the widest margin in the top five on this desk's calculation.

§3One lot in five stayed inside its range.

One lot in the five did not beat its book. A Tiffany and Co. Fleurage bracelet, eight round diamonds of 10.80 carats forming the flower centres and 439 smaller rounds totalling 25 carats across the petals and leaves, made $127,500 against an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. It sold inside the range, 15% below the high. It is also the only lot of the five whose estimate already reached six figures at the top, which is the ordinary pattern rather than a surprise: the lots that beat their books were the ones the house priced conservatively, and the one priced near the level it eventually made did not move. Together the five made $1,024,850, which against a sale of more than $8 million is at most 12.8% of the money.

The sapphire result is the one worth carrying, and it needs its limits stated. Kashmir is the scarcest origin in sapphire, and a 4.17-carat Kashmir stone in a period mount is a lot rather than a market. Doyle publishes no origin or treatment detail in the results this desk read, so it cannot be said which laboratory called the origin or whether the stones are unheated, and either fact moves a sapphire price by multiples on its own. What can be said is narrower.

The house priced a pair of 1890 sapphire earrings at $30,000 to $50,000 and the room paid $140,200, which is 8.17 carats of sapphire at $17,160 a carat before any allowance for the diamonds or the mount. Whoever set that estimate was reading a different market from the one that arrived.