(Bloomberg) -- Jewelry industry insiders are starting to connect the dots surrounding the massive diamond ring that Ben Affleck gave Jennifer Lopez to announce their engagement on April 8.
“There's been a call on the street, I would say, for the last two months for something like this,” says Josh Weinman, chief executive officer of Artisan Global Alliance, which specializes in rare fancy colored and white diamonds, via telephone.
Specifically, the call was for “an approximately 10-carat green diamond—intense or vivid, green yellow, or yellow green—which I believe this stone is,” he added, referring to photographs he's seen of Lopez's engagement ring.
Weinman, who did not supply the stone, said the call would have gone out to “probably 15 to 20 diamantaires that play in that space—of green, green blue, straight green, green yellow diamonds.”
Lisa Linhardt, a New York-based diamantaire and jeweler who has made pieces for Jennifer Lopez in the past, saw the actress's new engagement ring in a photo on Instagram and was impressed by the brightness of the green. “I thought that it could be color-treated in some way—what we call irradiated,” Linhardt says, referring to the process by which heat is added to enrich a diamond's color. But when she saw other photos, and heard through the industry grapevine who worked on the ring, she no longer thinks so. “The ring appears to be a natural, beautiful green color, and a diamond in that size and color is exceptionally rare.”
Lopez probably looked at the stone before buying it, experts say. “These things take time,” Weinman says. “Generally, a client isn't going to pull the trigger on a diamond after seeing it only once. Every diamond is this category is so unique and so different.”
Weinman says Affleck—or possibly, Lopez—has chosen well. “She's been a fan of rare, fancy colored diamonds for a long time,” he says. “This diamond most likely has a green fluorescence to it as well. There are diamonds that look like they glow in the dark.”
Linhardt has been in the business for 15 years, including a retail store in downtown Manhattan for 12 years; she closed it when the pandemic hit. She's set to reopen as a by-appointment-only atelier in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., on May 2. She has designed for Nicki Minaj, Gisele Bundchen, Iman, Kerry Washington, and Cyndi Lauper.
“We all know J.Lo as wearing that famous green dress, and green has always brought her luck,” she says. “She's had blue, she's had white, she's had pink. I suppose it's time for something different.”
Had the diamond been irradiated, “That would have definitely been controversial, especially considering the caliber of gem stones J.Lo has received in the past. Plus, there is a big debate over lab grown vs. irradiated vs. natural in this community right now.”
So what would something like this cost, roughly? Linhardt's estimate is “$5 [million] to $7 million for everything. The side stones are not super relevant. It looks like it was set in 18-carat gold prongs and a white gold or platinum setting.”
Weinman wouldn't venture a guess. “It's such a rare item that the price is almost blind,” he says. “You're not going to find too many other stones like this to compare against.”
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