In 1940, Shirley Temple’s father bought a $7,210 fancy diamond ring for the child star’s 12th birthday. He chose a deep blue colored stone to commemorate her 44th movie, The Blue Bird, which was also completed the same season. The actress-turned-diplomat was particularly fond of the rare blue stone, and the ring remained in her possession until her death in 2014. Now the Shirley Temple Blue Diamond is being sold at Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels auction in New York on April 19 and is expected to fetch as much as $35 million.
The child star was known for lighting up the silver screen during the Great Depression before becoming an American diplomat in her later years. While the ownership of the ring alone makes it a collectors piece, colored stones were not particularly popular in the ‘40s making the stone itself exceptionally rare. The titanium-set, 9.54-carat cushion-cut Fancy Blue Diamond ring boasts WS2 clarity and is potentially Internally Flawless. Estimates put the final auction price somewhere between $25 million to $35 million.
