A pink diamond that sold for 50 million U.S. dollars at an auction in the Swiss city of Geneva has broken the record price per carat for a stone of its kind, Christie's auction house said Wednesday.

The 19-carat diamond, known as "Pink Legacy", was purchased by the American luxury jeweler Harry Winston, part of the Swiss Swatch group, said Christie's, which did not say who the seller was.

"This exceptional diamond captured the imagination of international collectors across the globe, with over 30,000 people visiting Christie's sale previews to see this remarkable stone," said Rahul Kadakia, Christie's International Head of Jewelry in a statement.

He said that the 2.6 million dollars per carat paid on Tuesday was a world record per carat price for a pink diamond.

The gem had a pre-sale estimate of between 30 million and 50 million dollars.

Christie's said the biannual Geneva jewelry netted 110 million dollars in total, with 86 percent of lots finding new owners.

The Winston Pink Legacy diamond, previously belonged to the Oppenheimer family, which for decades run the De Beers diamond mining company from South Africa.

The stone was discovered in a South African mine around a century ago and was probably cut in the 1920s and has not been altered since then, Christie's said.

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