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Get ready to bid: Massive 30-carat, yellow diamond goes up for auction in Toronto

This Sunday, Toronto auction house Ritchies will be auctioning what is believed to be the largest coloured diamond ever auctioned in the country — and likely the most expensive, too.

According to Kashif Khan, the managing director of Ritchies, opening bids are expected to start at $400,000 or $500,000 for the rectangular, radiant-cut, 30-carat yellow diamond solitaire.

As for how high Khan expects bids to go for the rare loose gem, "we have no idea."

"It could sell for $500,000, it could sell for $3 million. It depends on who’s in the room," he told the Toronto Star.

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Ritchies and Khan currently hold the record for the largest diamond every sold at auction in Canada: a 50-carat white diamond that went for $2.7 million in 2011. (What a deal: It was appraised at $10 million.) Before that, the most expensive auctioned gem in Canadian history was a 10-carat pink diamond, which sold for $2.3 million in 2010.

Khan expects the rare yellow diamond, the largest coloured diamond to hit the auction block in Canada, to set a new price record.

The dime-sized diamond was purchased for "a few hundred thousand dollars" 20 years ago, and is now being sold by a New York investor.

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Recent auctions of yellow diamonds in the 20-carat range have seen bids as high as $3 million.

The diamond is lot 330 in Sunday's auction, which will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel at 2 p.m.

Attendees can arrive as early as 11 a.m. to better get a glimpse at the hundreds of luxury auction items, including a four-piece sapphire-and-diamond set, a silvery charm necklace believed to have once belonged to Jennifer Lopez, a men's automatic Audemars Piguet wristwatch valued at $566,000, and charcoal drawings by Willem de Kooning.

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