The world's most expensive necklace - whose massive centrepiece diamond was found by a little girl on a pile of rubbish 30 years ago - is on sale for £37m

An egg-shaped diamond, found in a lump of rock by a poverty-stricken African girl, has gone on sale – as the  centrepiece of the world’s most expensive necklace.
Known as L’Incomparable, the flawless yellow gem has more than 407 carats.
The necklace is studded with 90 white diamonds weighing nearly 230 carats and it can be yours for £34million.

Jessica Nasr holds the 637-carat 'L'incomparable necklace', featuring the world's largest internally flawless diamond

The necklace has been awarded the title of 'Most Valuable Necklace' in the world by the Guinness World Records

It was created by luxury jeweller Mouawad and is being offered for sale at a Singapore jewellery show.
Only serious potential buyers will get the chance to try it on.
For the L’Incomparable is protected by an army of security guards, plain-clothed supervisors, cameras, and motion detectors.

Yet ‘serious interest’ has been shown by two potential buyers from Asia, Mouawad’s managing director Jean Nasr confirmed.
One thing is certain, the child who found it in the 1980s will never benefit. Her identity and fate remains a mystery.

World's most expensive necklace to go on sale for £37m

The necklace, created by luxury jeweller Mouawad, will be the flashiest item on offer at the Singapore JewelFest

The necklace' centrepiece diamond was found by chance in a pile of mining rubble by a young girl in the Democratic Republic of Congo

L’Incomparable was found in its rough state weighing 890 carats by the girl as she played in a pile of rubble outside her uncle’s house in the town of Mbuji Mayi in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The rubble had been legitimately collected  from the nearby MIBA Diamond Mine, after being rejected.
To their eternal cost, the workers who assessed it had decided the rock was too bulky to be worth scanning for diamonds.
But when the girl’s uncle saw the lump, he was convinced it was of value and sold it to local African diamond dealers for an unknown sum.

It features a yellow, internally flawless diamond of more than 407 carats suspended from a rose gold setting that is studded with 90 white diamonds weighing nearly 230 carats

The dealers, in turn, sold it to a group of Lebanese buyers operating from Kinshasa, Kenya.
It was later bought in Antwerp by De Beers and Sir Philip Oppenheimer, then president of the Central Selling Organisation and a De Beers director, sold it to the Zale Corporation, a Dallas-based jewellery store chain. 
It continued to grow in value until it finally went on display as a finished stone in the Natural History wing of Washington’s Smithsonian Institute.

L'INCOMPARABLE - THE STONES BEYOND COMPARE

• As well as the huge rock, L’Incomparable also includes 35 round diamonds, 27 pear-shaped ones, nine that are heart-shaped, five emerald-cut diamonds, five cushion diamonds, four oval diamonds and four others

• Guinness named it the world’s most valuable necklace in 2013

• The egg-shaped gemstone took more than four years to polish

• Its creator says the only thing the necklace lacks is to ‘grace the neck of a Queen or a very special woman’