Lucapa has sold off the first diamonds from its Mothae mine in Lesotho and they are fetching as much as a whopping $US36,664 ($51,004) a carat.

That is even better than the price the junior miner (ASX:LOM) got recently from the first international sale of diamonds from its Lulo mine in Angola.

But don’t despair — if $34,000 is a little out of your price range, there is also a $36 carat version.

The total parcel of 5,411 carats of rough diamonds sold at tender in Antwerp for $US3.8m.

The sale represented an overall average price per carat of $US707.

The diamonds were recovered during the plant ramp-up phase in the last quarter of 2018 and in the first month of commercial mining operations at Mothae in January.

Some of the diamonds, however, were much smaller and brought the average price per carat down.

If Lucapa had sold just the 4100 carats of bigger Mothae diamonds it could have fetched an average price per carat of $US900.

But the smaller diamonds of around 1300 carats only sold for an average price per carat of $US36.

Lucapa said the presence of these smaller diamonds will decrease as mining gets deeper.

Selection of Mothae diamonds sold in the Antwerp tender. Pic: Lucapa
Selection of Mothae diamonds sold in the Antwerp tender. Pic: Lucapa

All-in-all the company was pretty chuffed with the price it got for its diamonds.

“The solid bidding we witnessed in Antwerp for this first commercial parcel has certainly marked Mothae’s arrival on the international scene as a producer of top-quality goods, complementing those from our Lulo mine,” managing director Stephan Wetherall told investors this morning.

“The strong sales prices achieved for our quality run of mine production, in the absence of a single stand-out stone, represent a great start for Mothae which augurs well for its future as a producer of exceptional diamonds and its contribution to the Basotho nation.”