Lucara CEO William Lamb hinted in a recent interview with South Africa's Financial Mail that the second-largest diamond ever discovered — the 2,488-carat Motswedi — may remain "in the rough."
Since the massive stone was unearthed at the famous Karowe Mine in Botswana in August of 2024, there has been speculation as to who the potential buyer may be and how the stone may be cut and polished.
Lamb told Rapaport senior analyst Joshua Freedman in September 2024 that the quality of the 2,488-carat diamond was still being assessed and it was still unclear how this “legacy” stone (defined as being valued at $10 million or more) would be sold.
In that interview, the Lucara executive had left open the possibility that the eventual buyer of “the largest stone in living memory” might end up being a museum or collector.
Now it appears as if the museum option may come to pass. Lucara is envisioning a different route for this treasure, to be showcased and admired by the masses while keeping the integrity of the remarkable specimen which has a rugged silvery-white appearance and weighs in at 17.58 ounces (1.1 pounds).
“We’ve had discussions with three different museums across the globe who want to acquire the (Motswedi) stone," Lamb recently told Financial Mail. "They want it in the rough. They don’t want to polish it.”
Lamb explained that selling stones of this size is difficult due to the limited number of buyers who could afford them.
It took nearly two years for Lucara to sell another impressive diamond — the 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona. It was originally put up for auction at Sotheby’s in June of 2016 with a reserve price of $70 million, but bids stalled at $61 million. It was eventually sold to British luxury jeweler Graff Diamonds for the relative bargain price of $53 million.
By November 2018, Graff had transformed the Lesedi La Rona into 67 diamonds ranging from just under 1 carat to more than 100 carats.
Most notably, the largest diamond ever discovered — the 3,106-carat Cullinan (1905) — was cut by the Asscher Company into nine principal diamonds and 96 smaller diamonds. The Cullinan I and II – known as the Great Star of Africa and the Lesser Star of Africa — are set in the Crown Jewels of Britain. They weigh 530 carats and 317 carats, respectively. The remaining seven principal diamonds, ranging in size from 94 carats to 4.39 carats, are in the collection of the British Royal Family.
In Setswana, the local language in Botswana, “Motswedi” means a flow of underground water that emerges to the surface offering life and vitality. The name was the winning entry from a Legacy National Diamond Naming Competition, which received more than 39,000 submissions from the citizens of Botswana.
Lucara’s Karowe Mine is credited as the source of seven of the top 10 largest rough diamonds ever discovered, thanks in part to the company’s state-of-the-art Mega Diamond Recovery (“MDR”) X-ray Transmission (“XRT”) technology, installed in 2017 to identify and preserve large, high-value diamonds.
Here’s how the diamonds of the Karowe Mine rank on the all-time list...
2 – 2,488 carats, Motswedi, 2024
3 – 1,758 carats, Sewelô, 2019
4 – 1,174 carats, unnamed, 2021
5 – 1,109 carats, Lesedi La Rona, 2015
7 – 1,094 carats, Seriti, 2024
8 – 1,080 carats, Eva Star, 2023
9 - 998 carats, unnamed, 2020
Lucara’s $683 million underground expansion at Karowe aims to extend the life of the mine beyond 2040.
Credits: Photo courtesy of CNW Group/Lucara Diamond Corp.