Barbie with diamond choker sells for record price

The one-off Barbie, created by Stefano Canturi, wears a black strapless evening dress with a choker featuring a one-carat square-cut pink diamond.

A Barbie doll wearing a diamond necklace has sold at an auction in New York for a record amount.

It went for $302,500 (£191,500) to an anonymous bidder.

The figure is at the lower end of the estimate that the auction house had given but it is still the most ever paid for a Barbie.

The previous world auction record for a Barbie was $17,091, set in 2006.

Barbie was first created in 1959 and she has undergone many transformations since then.

Canturi, an Australian jewellery designer, said he wanted to pay homage to Barbie's "modern yet timeless style".

The BBC's Laura Trevelyan, who was at the auction, says the doll is also an investment in uncertain economic times - because of the diamonds.


Canturi says: "People are finding things other than the normal channels for investing and what's happening is going back to the basics like going back to beautiful gold, gems, something they can actually hold on to."

The prices of diamonds and coloured jewels have gone up by more than 20% over the past year, according to the auction house, Christie's.

The proceeds of the sale of the bejewelled Barbie will go to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Big Bucks: Big Bang!Hublot Watch Covered with 141 Carats of Diamonds

The €2 million ($2.8 million) Big Bang watch from Hublot could be more appropriately called the Bling Bang. The white gold, one-of-a-kind timepiece, which includes a Vendôme Tourbillon movement, contains 637 baguette diamonds and one rose cut diamond on the crown.

All told, the total weight of the diamonds, which are graded Top white / VVS, exceeds 141 carats.

According to Hublot, the task of cutting the stones took 45 gem-cutters in excess of 13,000 hours. Once the diamonds were all cut, they took a further 2,000 hours to set into the piece, which began life as a "light-hearted confidential challenge" between Hublot's CEO and the company’s master gemstone setters.

Such was the amount of work needed to complete the watch; it was only finished the day before BaselWorld 2011 opened, where the watch was shown to the public for the first time.

More than 270 carats of rough diamonds were chosen from a parcel of 1,500 carats sourced from a mine in the Yakutsk region of Russia.

For those interested in seeing it up close, the watch is going on display at the Hublot boutique at 10 Place Vendôme, Paris.

Article courtesy of Idex Online