Freeman’s auctions Sandra Schultz Newman’s diamond ring and signed jewels

Freeman’s will center its June 10 Important Jewelry auction in New York on a 19.12-carat emerald-cut diamond ring that carries a far larger story than its weight. The platinum-mounted ring, estimated at $350,000 to $450,000, was bought with winnings from Sandra Schultz Newman’s record-setting racehorse, Nihilator, and sits at the heart of a Newman section Freeman’s has titled Grace and Gavel: Jewelry from the Collection of the Honorable Sandra Schultz Newman.

Newman’s own life made the ring feel even more charged. She was the first woman elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, winning a seat in 1995 after serving as a judge on the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, and she retired in 2006. She also broke ground earlier as the first female assistant district attorney in Montgomery County, then spent decades building a public career that tied Philadelphia legal history to the city’s wider social world. Newman died on February 2, 2026, in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, at 87.

The diamond itself is not only large, but carefully finished. Freeman’s lot description lists bullet-shaped side diamonds totaling about 1.35 carats, and a GIA report dated 2026 grades the center stone F color, SI1 clarity, with no fluorescence. That combination of size, shape and clean platinum mounting gives the ring a crisp, architectural profile, the kind of setting that lets an emerald cut read as elegant rather than merely imposing.

The racehorse provenance gives the jewel its charge. Nihilator won 35 of 38 starts, earned $3,225,754, became the first standardbred to surpass $3 million in earnings, and was later inducted into the United States Harness Racing Hall of Fame. Harness-racing sources also place him in the record books for a Meadowlands and world-record mile of 1:49.3 in 1985. Those are the numbers behind the ring, and they explain why the piece feels less like a trophy than a private monument to an improbable partnership between a jurist and a champion horse.

Freeman’s says the Newman estate was assembled over decades and reflects a deeply personal eye. Alongside the headline ring are signed jewels from Van Cleef & Arpels, Tiffany, Bulgari and Cartier, plus equestrian-themed pieces including a Diamond, Sapphire and Gold Horse Brooch, a Gold Equestrian Bracelet and an Enamel and Gold Stick Pin showing a harness race in motion. The estate will continue in a dedicated Philadelphia sale on June 23, followed by an online Essential Jewelry sale on June 24, keeping the Newman name anchored to the city that shaped her life and collection.