Elizabeth Taylor is famous for many things: her acting career, her legendary beauty, her charitable efforts, and her stupendous jewellery collection. What I love about her approach to it is that she calls herself a caretaker and has always been casual about wearing and allowing others to try on her amazing pieces.

Her relationship with Richard Burton was marked by gorgeous jewels, and the Taylor-Burton diamond is one such piece. Burton lost out at auction to Cartier, but ended up buying the stone (then set in a ring) from the jeweller immediately after the auction ended. The 69.42 carat pear shaped stone is D colour, internally flawless. And very, very rare. He paid about $1,150,000 in 1969. Given the specs of the stone and it’s provenance, I can only imagine how much it would go for if sold today.

Taylor had the stone reset into a necklace as she found it too cumbersome to wear in a ring.