A flawless blue diamond weighing 7.03 carats has sold for a record 10.5 million Swiss francs ($9.49 million), the highest price paid per carat for any gemstone at auction, Sotheby’s said.

The rectangular-shaped blue stone, mounted on a platinum ring, is the rarest to enter the international market this year.

The anonymous phone bidder, who won after a 15-minute war, has yet to name the gem.

A Georgia man’s collection of more than 10,000 Abraham Lincoln stamps has sold at auction in New York City for a total of nearly $2 million.

The collection was amassed by William Ainsworth, a retired executive from the consulting and accounting firm KPMG.

He inherited his father’s stamp collection more than 40 years ago. Until 1977, he paid it little mind, but a meeting with a former postmaster general changed his thinking.

Christie’s is offering a rare, 100-million-year-old petrified shell of an extinct Canadian marine creature.

This fossilized ammonite is expected to fetch $70,000 at an auction next week in France.

The fossil has naturally occurring iridescent colors created when the original shell substance turned into a mineral called aragonite.

A medieval Islamic glass vessel sold in London yesterday for 1.6 million pounds ($2.3 million), more than 20 times as much as it fetched less than a decade ago, when it was dismissed as a fake.

The 8-inch-high “Rothschild Bucket” was offered in Sotheby’s “Arts of the Islamic World” sale as a mid-14th-century piece, Bloomberg reports.

The bucket is actually a glass finger bowl, intricately gilded and decorated with colourful enamels, that dates from 14th century Egypt or Syria. It was made during the Mamluk dynasty that ruled the region from 1250 to 1517.

A Lebanese property developer living in England has paid 352,411 pounds (US$509,768) for license plate number “1D”, a new record in the world of collectible British license plates.

At an auction held by the DVLA, the agency which regulates British vehicle registration, the highly-coveted plate sold for a total of 285,000 pounds, but fees and taxes added nearly 70,000 pounds to the winning bid.

The winning bidder bought the plate as a birthday present for his wife and will affix it to her Bentley. After taxes and fees, it ranks as the second most expensive plate sold after “F 1″ went for 440,625 pounds last year.

Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada will auction off some of the art that inspired his East-meets-West style, as he trades his plush Paris mansion for smaller digs on the Seine River.

The announcement came a month after the late Yves Saint-Laurent’s art collection was put up for auction by his partner Pierre Berge, a 373.5-million-euro bonanza that caused friction with China over a pair of looted bronze relics.

From Hopi Kachina dolls to bronze Buddhas, more than 1,000 pieces collected over the past two decades will be on the block at the June 16-17 sale organized by Aguttes auction house.