Far rarer than its colourless sibling, the pink diamond has been worn by royalty, used by Ben Affleck to woo Jennifer Lopez and adorned the fingers of many a Hollywood celebrity.
With only a handful of the pink gemstones produced each year, they command significantly higher prices than colourless diamonds and are considered by some to be the greatest store of wealth - all the more so given that the prices of colourless diamonds fell by around 10 per cent when the global economic meltdown began a year ago.
Representatives of mining giant Rio Tinto are in town to sell a small haul of pink diamonds from its Argyle mine in northwestern Australia at this week's jewellery and gem fair - which organisers say is the world's biggest such event.
The 43 pink diamonds it is offering for sale weigh a combined 34.74 carats and range from the heart-shaped 2.61-carat Argyle Amour to a 0.46-carat Princess-cut stone. The gems have also been seen by jewellers, collectors and other customers in Mumbai, Sydney and London.
'The response from clients has been quite good,' Josephine Archer, Rio Tinto's business manager for Argyle pink diamonds, said.
The company refuses to disclose the size of winning bids for its pink diamonds, or who the bidders are. For a guide to the kind of prices they can command, auction house Christie's estimated that a rare, five-carat, cushion-cut pink diamond it will sell in Hong Kong on December 1 will fetch between US$5 million and US$7 million. The diamond was set in a ring by renowned jeweller Graff Diamonds.