Beau Sancy Beau Sancy The Beau Sancy is a modified "pear double rose cut" diamond found in India that has been owned by a number of European royal houses. In May 2012, it was sold at Sotheby's auction in Geneva for $9.57 million. The original estimated price of $2 million was lifted five times during the eight-minute battle between five buyers, before the diamond was sold to one of them who remained anonymous. The Beau Sancy diamond takes its name from Nicolas de Harlay, Lord of Sancy, who brought the diamond to France from India where he had been the French ambassador.
Multiunit auction provides an incentive for bidders to bid insincerely unless each bidder has demand for only a single unit. For multiple-unit demand, bidders have an incentive to shade their bids for units other than their first because those bids may influence the price the bidder pays. This demand reduction results in an inefficient equilibrium. A variation that preserves the incentive to bid truthfully is the Vickrey-Clark-Groves auction. In a pay-as-bid auction (or discriminatory price auction), multiple homogeneous items are sold at different prices. An example is the auction system at the Dutch Flower Auctions, where a lot is allocated to (potentially)