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Houston Retailer And Famed Diamond Expert Creates Argyle Millennia Collection September 06, 2021 (0 comments)
Houston, TX—Diamond Cutters International has created The Millennia Collection™, a never-before-achieved collection of the world's finest pink, red, and violet diamonds from the Argyle mine, which closed in 2020.
"This collection unites the world's greatest red, pink and violet diamonds of their classes and uniquely affords the opportunity to appreciate all Argyle Diamonds have to offer," says renowned diamond expert Fred Cuellar, CEO of Diamond Cutters International and author of the bestselling book How to Buy a Diamond.
Cuellar also serves as a consultant for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Houston Chronicle, and MSNBCand has been featured on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, NBC's Today Show, CBS Morning News, CNN, ESPN, and in Cosmopolitan, US Weekly, InStyle magazines and more than 100 other news and talk shows.
Cuellar has been a regular invitee to the Argyle Diamond Tender, for 38 years an annual invitation-only event for about 150 colored diamond dealers and collectors worldwide. The final Argyle Diamond Tender just accepted its final bids September 1 following the 2020 closure of the Australian mine. As a result, the price of the mine’s colored diamonds is expected to skyrocket.
Related: Shocking Pink: Argyle Stones Should Rocket In Value After Mine Closes
"With the last 70 stones up for bid in the final Argyle Tender, that will make only 2,060 Argyle tender diamonds, most already secured away in private collections for long term investments. Any time a stone comes onto the market, it is going to cause a stir among collectors," Cuellar explained.
Houston-based retailer and diamond expert Fred Cuellar
Argyle does not disclose who does win the bids, so a collector or dealer trying to build a collection has to rely on who and what they know to find out who won certain tender stones, Cuellar explains in a blog post about creating the Millennia Collection and the steps he had to take to acquire the three stones. The compilation of an argyle pink, red, and violet diamond in a single collection is known as "The Argyle Trifecta™".
The Argyle Trifecta wasn't won at one single Argyle Tender lottery year, making it even more complicated to trace the stones and convince the owners to sell, says Cuellar in his blog.
“These diamonds were won by various parties at different tenders, and if you want to be the next owner, you’re going to have to pick up the telephone and start calling people to figure out where they are. There are going to be a lot of dead ends, a lot of changing provenance, and a lot of broken promises, but you’ve got to find the people who have a seat at the table or find someone who knows someone at the table. When you make enough calls (six degrees of separation) and you finally get the owner, you then have to convince them to be a seller and to make an offer that they will want to accept. If lucky, you’ll then own one of the three winning tickets. Then, you get a goodnight sleep after a 1000 bad ones, and you'll then wake up again tomorrow and do it all over again until you have the three rarest color diamonds from the Argyle diamond mine.”
Here are the three stones that make up The Millennia Collection:
- The Millennia Red™ (top image, left) is the only VS clarity GIA graded Pure Fancy Red in the world that is also a tender stone certified by Argyle as Purplish Red. It features an extraordinary "green heart" of peridot. (2020 Tender Lot 30).
- The Millennia Violet™ (top left in above image) is the largest BL3+ Violet Argyle Hero Stone in the world, formerly known as the Argyle Allure™. (2012 Tender Lot 57 Hero Stone)
- The Millennia Pink™ (bottom right in above image) is the only Pure Fancy Deep Pink oval stone of this quality grade ever offered at an Argyle Tender. (2020 Tender Lot 34).