Tobias Kormind, managing director of Europe’s largest online diamond jeweller 77 Diamonds, shared his thoughts on the jewellery's historic allure: "A scandalous link to Marie Antoinette and the dramatic end of the French monarchy, this historic necklace, which is unusually intact for a Georgian jewel, has it all."

Experts say some of the stones in the piece are a match with the original diamonds central to a royal scandal.

The necklace containing around 300 carats of diamonds was bought by an unidentified woman who put in her bid over the phone, Sotheby's said.

Worn at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953, the 300-carat diamond necklace sold Wednesday for more than twice its estimate at an auction in Geneva.

A mysterious necklace laden with some 500 diamonds and with possible links to a scandal that contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette, sold for $4.8 million at an auction in Geneva Wednesday. Sotheby's said it was likely that some of the diamonds featured in the piece came from the famous necklace from the scandal that engulfed Marie Antoinette just a few years before she was guillotined.