For Sale: One $50 Million Sapphire - Slightly Used

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- It's larger than a hen's egg, encircled with 35 brilliant cut diamonds, and now available to those who have the means.

Said to be the world's largest and most valuable sapphire, the Black Star of Queensland will be sold by Beverly Hills art and antiques curator Jack Armstrong on behalf of the Kazanjian Foundation. It weighs 733 carats and is reportedly valued at $50 million.

From a news report in the 1930s - The immense and stunning stone comes from the Anakie sapphire fields in Central Queensland, Australia. On a picnic with her family, Mrs. Roy McKinley stubbed her toe on the mostly-submerged gem, thus originally discovering it.

When it first arrived in the U.S., its nearest rival was a gray sapphire, 170 karats smaller, that was a part of the fabled J.P. Morgan collection. The Black Star arrived in America in the 1940s, acquired by the Kazanjian brothers, who were immigrants from Armenia and became highly successfully California-based precious stone jewelers. Their descendants now oversee the Kazanjian Foundation.

According to experts the Black Star of Queensland is a museum quality piece and so, for the last 17 years, the gem has been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.

"The sale of the Black Star sapphire is a huge event in the gem market. To have a stone like this come on the market is tantamount to having a Raphael painting suddenly emerge," says Armstrong. It is one of a handful of precious gems like the Krupp Diamond, owned by Elizabeth Taylor. The Black Star is larger than both the engagement ring of Princess Diana and of Louis IV's 137-carat crown jewel. Armstrong intends the stone to be exhibited in California before passing into private hands.