Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran, chair of the Private Management Office said the sale of the so-called Hawaii collection will proceed as planned after the Marcos family voluntarily relinquished ownership of the jewelry set.
Beltran said proceeds from the sale will go to the Bureau of Treasury and Presidential Commission on Good Government.
The Hawaii collection includes a rare 25-carat barrel-shaped pink diamond, and was among those appraised by Christie's and rival Sotheby's in November last year.
It could be recalled that the pink diamond was initially valued at $5 million.
"Some of the pieces are so important, so magnificent. There's a very wide variety of pieces - antique to modern, which is again what you would see in a current day royal collection - things that fit every occasion. So if you put me in there to value the jewelry and I had no knowledge of where it came from, I would say this feels like a royal collection," David Warren, director of jewelry at London-based Christie's, had said in the November report.
source: www.abs-cbnnews.com
