De Beers Blue Diamond Fails to Sell at Sotheby’s

   

             5.53 carat De Beers blue diamond

A blue diamond weighing 5.53 carats failed to find a buyer at Sotheby’s Geneva on Wednesday despite being billed as the star of the auction.

The cushion brilliant-cut, fancy-vivid-blue diamond is part of an eight-piece group called the De Beers Exceptional Blue Collection, which Sotheby’s has spread between its various Magnificent Jewels sales. No bids matched the stone’s threshold price for sale, according to a post-auction report by the Fancy Color Research Foundation (FCRF). The piece carried a presale estimate of $11 million to $15 million.

“The blue is an exceptional stone in every sense,” Sotheby’s told Rapaport News Thursday. “It attracted significant interest prior to yesterday’s sale. While we didn’t get to see it sell in the room last night, we are confident it will find a new home very soon.”

Meanwhile, a number of items set records at the November 9 sale, including a 20.16-carat sapphire and diamond ring from Cartier. That piece, which fetched $2.8 million against a high estimate of $2 million, saw a record price per carat for any blue sapphire of Burmese origin ever sold at auction. A 20.58-carat, pink sapphire ring also broke the record for per-carat price, bringing in $1.9 million, or $91,690 per carat, well above its $808,368 upper price tag. A pink sapphire and diamond brooch weighing 92.01 carats by Jean Schlumberger sold for $1.8 million, outstripping its $505,278 high estimate and setting a record price for a piece of jewelry by the designer.

Another notable item at the sale was a pair of unmounted oval-cut, D-flawless diamonds weighing 20.03 and 20.19 carats. The duo fetched $4.2 million, within estimates. A step-cut, 33.13-carat, D-color, VVS1-clarity diamond ring by Cartier brought in $2.9 million, also within its expected range.

The entire Geneva Magnificent Jewels auction garnered $50 million. Sotheby’s will offer two more blue diamonds from the De Beers collection at its upcoming New York Magnificent Jewels sale on December 7.

Source: DCLA

Petra Diamonds halts Williamson mine in Tanzania after dam breach

          Petra Diamonds halts Williamson mine

Petra Diamonds said on Monday it had halted operations at its Williamson mine in Tanzania after a tailings storage facility burst, causing flooding in nearby areas.

The company, which also operates three mines in South Africa, said the eastern wall of Williamson’s tailing dam was “breached”, but said in an email that the pit was not affected.

Petra noted that there were no injuries or fatalities confirmed so far, adding that the government and mine emergency response teams had been mobilized to the site.

“While no injuries have been reported, any impact on the local communities would be viewed as a material negative from an ESG standpoint,” Berenberg bank analysts said in a note.

The diamond miner has worked hard to clean up its image in Tanzania. Last year, it achieved a £4.3 million (about $4.9m) settlement with claimants alleging widespread human rights abuses, including beatings and detentions, at Williamson —the country’s biggest diamond mine.

Petra, which has repeatedly denied the involvement of its own employees in the incidents, admitted that “regrettable” incidents took place at the mine in the past. 

The clashes between locals and police resulted in “the loss of life, injury and the mistreatment of illegal diggers” within the mining license, it said last year.

Watchdog World Mine Tailings Failures (WMTF) said Williamson’s is third diamond tailings failure in a year and the 19th of this decade (2015-2024).

The organization’s executive director, Lindsay Newland Bowker, noted that in terms of mineral production, this decade is already the worst in terms of catastrophic tailings failures in recorded history.

Source: DCLA

Pink diamond sells for $49.9m

The 11.15-carat Williamson Pink Star diamond 

An 11.15 carat pink diamond has been sold for $49.9m in Hong Kong, setting a world record for the highest price per carat for a diamond sold at auction.

Auctioned on Friday by Sotheby’s Hong Kong, the Williamson Pink Star diamond was originally estimated at $21m.

The gem draws its name from two legendary pink diamonds.

The first is the 23.60 carat Williamson diamond which was presented to the late British Queen Elizabeth II as a wedding gift in 1947.

The second is the 59.60 carat Pink Star diamond that sold for a record $71.2m at auction in 2017.

The Williamson Pink Star is the second largest pink diamond to appear at auction.

Pink diamonds are among the rarest and most valuable of the coloured diamonds.

Source: DCLA

Lucara Sales Fall Amid Lack of High-Value Diamonds

          Lucara Diamonds – Karowe Diamond Mine

Lucara Diamond Corp.’s sales dropped in the third quarter as the company supplied fewer large and expensive stones from its lucrative Karowe mine in Botswana.

Revenue fell 31% year on year to $49.9 million, while net profit slumped 86% to $1.8 million, Lucara reported Wednesday.

Sales of rough from Karowe declined 36% to $46.5 million, with volume down 15% at 99,301 carats and the average price falling 43% to $337 per carat. The remaining revenue came from sales of third-party goods on Lucara’s Clara online platform.

Management blamed a decrease in the number of high-value diamonds the company sold to HB Antwerp through the pair’s supply agreement. The Belgian manufacturer is contracted to buy all Karowe rough of 10.8 carats or more, with Lucara receiving a proportion of the final polished proceeds.

In the third quarter a year earlier, Lucara sold four pink diamonds and two white, type IIa stones — weighing 393.5 and 257.5 carats — to HB. As a result of the unfavorable comparison, revenue from the agreement plummeted 46% to $27.1 million.

“Despite the overall decrease in revenue recognized in [the third quarter], diamond-market fundamentals continued to support healthy prices as steady demand and some inventory shortages were reported,” Lucara said. Fluctuation in the availability of 10.8-carat production is expected, it added.

Output from Karowe slid 19% year on year to 78,879 carats for the quarter.

Source: DCLA

Contraband handbags, diamonds and vodka auctioned off by French government

France’s finance ministry is auctioning off customs contraband in an “extraordinary sale” featuring platinum bars seized en route to the UK, designer handbags, valuable historic coins, several collections of uncut diamonds and 2,016 bottles of vodka.

The 350 lots – valued collectively at about €1m – also include a Volkswagen Golf stopped at France’s border with Spain and found to contain 480kg of cannabis resin.

A white gold Rolex set with 40 rubies, with a catalogue estimate of €15,000. 

More than 1,200 potential buyers have signed up to take part in the auction, which will be held in the finance ministry at Bercy in Paris.

The 14 platinum bars weighing 1kg each and stamped “Crédit Suisse” were reportedly discovered by French customs officials in the baggage of two people travelling to the UK who claimed they were working for a Paris business. Each ingot is for sale at a starting price of €22,000.

One of the 14 platinum bars up for auction. 

Seized items detailed in the catalogue also include gold sovereigns bearing the heads of the British monarchs Elizabeth II, Victoria, Edward VII and George V, as well as several gold “Napoléons”.

Among the luxury goods up for auction are Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Fendi and Valentino handbags and several expensive watches including a white gold Rolex set with 40 rubies – catalogue estimate €15,000 – as well as perfumes and a pair of Bottega Veneta shoes seized at Nice airport. The uncut diamonds, being sold in several lots – one of which is listed as totalling 197.95 carats – were seized at Paris airports.

Certain items will be sold only to professional buyers for security or legal reasons, including three and a half pallets of Grey Goose vodka bottles, listed with a starting price of €10,000.

Three and a half pallets of Grey Goose vodka bottles are listed with a starting price of €10,000

The finance ministry said the sale reflected “the diversity of objects seized by customs officers”.

“The customs service battles daily against all illegal traffic that threatens our territory and our society in order to protect citizens and the environment,” it added.

Source: DCLA

Debswana posts 37.5% jump in 9-month diamond sales

 

Rough diamonds sales by Debswana Diamond Company jumped 37.5% in the first nine months of 2022, statistics released by the Bank of Botswana showed Tuesday, driven by steady demand for jewellery.

A joint venture between Anglo American unit De Beers and Botswana government, Debswana sells 75% of its output to De Beers with the balance taken up by state-owned Okavango Diamond Company.

Debswana’s January-September sales rose to $3.578 billion from $2.602 billion a year earlier, data from the central bank showed.

In Botswana’s pula currency, Debswana’s rough diamond sales rose 52.5% to 43.237 billion pula reflecting a stronger dollar in the period.

In dollar and pula terms, the nine-month sales top the company’s full-year results in 2021 when sales totalled $3.466 billion and 38.134 billion pula.

Debswana accounts for almost all diamonds produced in Botswana with Lucara’s Karowe mine being the only other operating diamond mine in the country.

Botswana generates about 30% of its revenue and 70% of its foreign exchange earnings from diamonds.

However, De Beers sees the risk of the market slowing down in the coming months due to a deterioration in global economic conditions, reduced consumer spending and continued Chinese covid-19 lockdowns.

“In line with normal seasonal trends, we anticipate that sales in the final quarter of the year will be affected by the normal temporary closure of cutting and polishing factories for the religious holidays in India,” parent firm Anglo American said last week.

Source: DCLA

41ct. Diamond Could Fetch Up to $5M at Christie’s