A 69-carat Cartier diamond ring costing $1.5 million was the gift movie star Richard Burton gave to his wife, Elizabeth Taylor.
Taylor and Burton met in 1963 and fell in love during the filming of Cleopatra. At the time they met, Taylor was 30 years old, already on her fourth marriage, and Burton was also married. A year after they got married, they soon started appearing in many movies together.
The couple’s lifestyle drew more attention than their movie. During the ‘60s, they earned a combined $88 million and spent more than $65 million.
They were American royalty, and their private life was filled with arguments and addiction problems.
By 1969, the world watched as their lives began to fall apart, with verbal and physical battles accompanied by expensive gifts; one of these was the famous Cartier diamond after a fight they had in a restaurant when Burton called Taylor’s hands large and ugly, and she responded that in that case, he’d better buy her the 69-carat ring she wanted so that her hands looked smaller and more attractive.
The 69.42-carat pear-shaped diamond was a cut from a 240.80-carat rough diamond found in South Africa’s Premier Mine in 1966.
Burton lost an initial 1969 auction to Cartier, then bought it directly from Cartier the next day.
In 1973, Burton and Taylor separated, and a year later they divorced. Three years later, Taylor put the diamond up for auction. The jeweler Henry Lambert bought it for $3 million and then sold it to a buyer in Saudi Arabia.
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