Before the Ocean Dream Had a Name: The Arslanian Story

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On 14 May 2026, the Ocean Dream — a 5.50-carat Fancy Vivid Blue-Green diamond and the largest of its kind ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America — sold at Christie’s Geneva Magnificent Jewels auction for CHF 13.5 million (approximately $17.3 million).

The result set a new world record for a blue-green diamond at auction. In a season where a 6-carat Fancy Vivid Blue diamond failed to find a buyer at Sotheby’s the previous evening, the Ocean Dream’s twenty-minute bidding battle was a pointed reminder that rarity — genuine, geological, unrepeatable rarity — still commands the room.

The auction world knows what happened in Geneva that evening. What it has probably never heard is how the Ocean Dream came to exist as a polished stone at all.

The story begins not in a Geneva saleroom but in the Central African Republic, where the Arslanian Group — one of the diamond trade’s most established cutting and manufacturing dynasties — maintained a network of buying offices for decades. It was the Arslanians who acquired the 10.70-carat rough, who sent it to Sahag’s uncle, Ara Arslanian — who had founded the family’s New York cutting operation, Cora Diamond Corporation, half a century earlier, in 1976 — to oversee its cutting, and who saw a year of painstaking work by a single master artisan transform it into the stone that the GIA would immediately recognise as unprecedented. When the Smithsonian mounted its landmark Splendor of Diamonds exhibition in 2003, the Ocean Dream was invited to stand alongside the De Beers Millennium Star, the Steinmetz Pink, and the Moussaieff Red.

Today, Sahag Arslanian leads the family business. He spoke to High Jewellery Dream about the decisions, the memories, and the emotions behind a diamond that has travelled from a $200,000 acquisition to a $17.3-million record — and what it means to see a stone you helped bring into the world return to the spotlight after more than two decades.

The Interview

The decision behind the cut

The rough weighed 10.70 carats, and the finished stone is 5.50 — nearly half the weight was sacrificed. Can you walk us through the decision-making behind the cut? What were the options your uncle Ara considered, and what made the final choice so difficult — or so clear?

Extremely rare fancy-coloured diamonds, such as the Ocean Dream, are exceptionally difficult to cut. The principle behind the cutting and polishing is twofold: colour revealing and weight preservation. The shape of the polished diamond followed the shape of the rough, which is why it has a more organic form rather than a traditional cut.

Back in 2002, the technology we have today did not exist. The process was very heavily human-led, unlike today, where technology plays a central role in mapping and polishing. One dedicated master artisan shaped the stone from start to finish, and it took him over a year of work — slowly, surely progressing, and after each cut assessing how the colour had been affected.

Only when you make the first opening do you truly know what lies beneath the surface. In addition to colour and weight, the way a stone is cut reveals the fire inside it. Too many impurities impair a clear vision of the diamond. For such uncharted territory, only when it is done do you know the work is done — there is nothing more to take away to enhance this hidden treasure.

The first moment of recognition

When the rough first came out of the ground in the Central African Republic, did your family immediately understand what you were looking at? Or did the true nature of the stone only reveal itself gradually, during cutting?

My grandfather, Melanchton, was truly a precursor: he opened a large network of buying offices across the African continent. My family’s involvement in the Central African Republic has been nearly constant from 1960 to today. When you have such a stone in your hand, not everyone understands its potential in its rough state. We immediately understood and therefore sent it to New York, where my uncle Ara had become the expert in manufacturing large fancy-coloured diamonds — one of the first to specialise in this field, starting in the 1980s.

The Smithsonian and the historical context

The Ocean Dream was exhibited at the Smithsonian’s Splendor of Diamonds in 2003, alongside the Millennium Star, the Steinmetz Pink, and the Moussaieff Red. What did it mean for your family — and for a stone acquired for $200,000 — to stand in that company? Did that exhibition change how the industry perceived the Ocean Dream?

Needless to say, the GIA was very enthusiastic about the stone. They warmly recommended that we loan it to the Smithsonian. The exhibition certainly made a significant difference in how the industry perceived blue-green diamonds — it was a colour that had never been seen before.

The stone’s return

You wrote that seeing the Ocean Dream again was deeply emotional. After more than two decades, and after the stone passed through several hands, what was it like to encounter it again, now at an estimated value of nearly $13 million? Does a cutter ever truly let go of a stone like this?

Not only do I remember very well having the stone — both in rough and polished form — at a young age, but I was physically present during the first Christie’s sale in Geneva in 2014. Seeing it again now, with my experience in the field, only reinforced how exceptional this diamond truly is.

You never let go of a stone like this. You are always longing to see that colour again.

The future of exceptional stones

Your family has handled some of the world’s rarest coloured diamonds. In a market increasingly shaped by lab-grown stones and shifting consumer values, what role do you see for extraordinary natural diamonds like the Ocean Dream — not just as assets, but as cultural objects?

We have had extraordinary colours over the years — vivid pinks and blues over 10 carats, remarkable yellows. We feel incredibly lucky to have found, polished, and given life to such treasures. Real is truly rare. In today’s world, where values are changing, we feel very reassured when such beauties are praised and prevail — not only as assets, but as cultural objects that areshaping the great history of marvellous diamonds. Being the owner of such a stone means that you are a true connoisseur and aficionado of the most difficult yet mesmerising treasure to behold.

A Stone That Remembers

The Ocean Dream’s record-setting result in Geneva confirmed what the market already suspected: among fancy colour diamonds, this stone occupies a category of one. No comparable Fancy Vivid Blue-Green diamond of this size exists in any known collection, public or private. Its value trajectory — from a $200,000 rough acquisition in Central Africa to $17.3 million at Christie’s — is the story of three generations of a family whose expertise turned an improbable geological event into one of the most celebrated coloured diamonds in the world.

What Sahag Arslanian’s account reveals is the dimension that auction catalogues, however meticulous, cannot capture: the year a single artisan spent coaxing colour from a rough whose potential only the Arslanians recognised; the pride of seeing a stone acquired for a fraction of its eventual worth exhibited alongside the greatest diamonds of the modern era; and the particular ache of watching something you shaped pass through the world and come back transformed — not in its facets, but in its meaning.

In a market increasingly populated by the engineered and the replicable, the Ocean Dream stands as a reminder that the most valuable things are often those that could never be made again — and that the stories behind them matter as much as the stones themselves.