Emerald ring, recovered from a 400-year-old shipwreck, has been sold for $1.2 million in support of Ukraine
A ring set with an emerald, rediscovered on a Spanish shipwreck nearly 400 years after being lost, was sold for $1.2 million at auction, with all proceeds set to be donated to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. — Forbes reports.
The 6.25-carat emerald set in the ring was carried onboard the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, which sank in 1622. In 1985, American businessman Frank Perdue helped fund the expedition that located the ship’s wreckage and recovered about $400 million worth of treasure.
Perdue donated most of his share but kept an emerald that he later had cut for the engagement ring he used to propose to his wife Mitzi in 1988.
As Forbes reports, Frank Perdue died in 2005; in 2022, his widow, Mitzi Perdue, decided to sell the ring in order to raise money for humanitarian groups offering aid in Ukraine, saying that her husband would “share my desire to help those in dire need.
The ring was sold to an anonymous buyer for far more than expected, more than 15 times as much as the $70,000 high-end estimate of the auction house.
