Red Cross Diamond

The Red Cross Diamond is that rarest of things: a great stone whose defining moment was an act of charity. A cushion-shaped canary yellow of approximately 205 carats, it takes its name not from its color but from its cause.

A gift to the wounded

In 1918, with the First World War still burning, a parcel from a South African mining syndicate arrived at a London auction house with instructions that one extraordinary yellow diamond be sold for the joint benefit of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John. In April of that year the stone brought £10,000 — a wartime fortune — and with it a name no marketing department could have invented.

The cross within

Nature added her own signature: the diamond’s pavilion facets, seen face-up, form a distinct Maltese cross — an accident of cutting geometry that seemed, to 1918 eyes, providential. Few important diamonds carry an optical emblem aligned so perfectly with their history.

A century of quiet appearances

The Red Cross has surfaced only a handful of times since — most recently returning to auction in Geneva in 2022, where it sold for over fourteen million dollars, its charitable tradition honored again with a portion of proceeds. Between appearances it has lived the discreet life of most great stones: privately held, rarely photographed, its legend compounding in absence.

Yellow at scale

At two hundred carats, saturated yellow color behaves differently — the stone reads as a source of light rather than a reflector of it. Fancy yellow remains the most attainable of the major fancy colors, which makes stones like the Red Cross the natural gateway through which collectors enter colored diamonds.

Legacy’s fancy color collection holds yellow diamonds selected on exactly this principle — color that performs at scale. The House’s fancy yellow buying guide explains the hue, tone and saturation ladder, or book a private consultation.