(IDEX Online) - Christie's has acknowledged the Nazi link to a collection of jewelry that is expected to sell for a record $150m in Geneva this month.The 700-plus items belonged to Heidi Horten, whose first husband Helmut Horten founded the eponymous chain of German department stores.It has since been established that Jewish businessmen in the 1930s were forced to sell him their own departmen...Read More
(IDEX Online) - US jeweler Zales has launched a "fine jewelry rental" scheme for lab grown diamonds.Customers pay 10 per cent of the retail price to borrow items for weddings or special occasions.The Zales x Rocksbox program is being piloted in-store at 28 branches of Zales, and could be rolled out to other banners in the Signet family. It is a collaboration with Rocksbox, the jewelry rental...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Gem Diamonds announced a 13 per cent increase in Q1 rough sales from Letseng, in Lesotho, the highest dollar per carat kimberlite diamond mine in the world. It raised $36.7m.The London-listed miner said it achieved an average $1,431 per carat during the quarter to 31 March 2023, virtually unchanged from the previous quarter.The highest price paid was $282,889 per carat for a 6.63-c...Read More
(IDEX Online) - The 11.16-carat pear-shaped Bulgari Laguna Blu - certified as the highest grade blue diamond ever by the GIA - could fetch $25m when it is auctioned at Sotheby's Geneva later this month.It is destined to become the most valuable gem ever to be sold by Bulgari. A European collector bought it from Bulgari in the 1970s and had it set in a ring. It has remained in their collection...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Caution persists and overall trading is slow, as reflected in heavy rounds losses and no more than a smattering of increases among fancies, which have fared better of late.India is braced for fewer bulk orders, US demand remains patchy and the predicted post-Covid bounce in China hasn't fully materialized.De Beers did however report $540m of rough sales during Cycle 3, a sligh...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Four jobless diamond polishers in Surat have taken their own lives within 10 days, as a global drop in demand forces factory owners to lay off staff.Three men and a woman committed suicide due to financial stress, according to a report in The Blunt Times, a news portal covering Surat and south Gujarat.The Diamond Workers' Union Gujarat (DWUG) says workers are being laid off, w...Read More
(IDEX Online) - A Swiss company claims it has developed technology that chemically profiles any diamond so it can identify the country - and even the specific mine - of origin.Spacecode says it analyzes diamonds at a molecular level to determine where it was mined, so it doesn't matter whether the stone has been registered earlier in the supply chain.The company has been in talks with the G7...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Tiffany & Co has re-opened its flagship store on Fifth Avenue, New York, after a revamp costing an estimated $500m.The setting for the iconic Breakfast at Tiffany's movie (1961) has been christened The Landmark.A catalog of A-listers - among them Florence Pugh, Gal Gadot, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zo?? << Kravitz, Michael B. Jordan, Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union, Brooklyn and Nic...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Signet CEO Virginia Drosos says the company's boycott of Russian diamonds will help its growth.In an interview with GJEPC's Solitaire magazine, she said they were following a consumer-driven desire, rather than a government-driven mandate and not selling Russian diamonds would help them grow faster."We've already been working with our partners to create a new w...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Antwerp's Diamantkring has become the first bourse to partner with the Natural Diamond Council (NDC).The New York-based NDC (known as the Diamond Producers' Association until June 2020) promotes the industry and educates consumers.Its members include miners De Beers Group, Lucara Diamond, Petra Diamonds, RZM Murowa, and Rio Tinto - representing about three quarters of the...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Rio Tinto reported a small drop in first quarter diamond production at its Diavik mine in Northwest Territories, Canada. It recovered 954,000 carats, down four per cent from 991,000 carats in Q1 2022, and down 27 per cent on Q4 2022.Rio Tinto, the world's second-largest metals and mining corporation, said the lower production was because of temporary restrictions accessin...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Diamonds were strewn across the floor of a shopping mall, when a raider was grabbed by security guards outside a jewelry store in New Zealand.He was one of six masked robbers, armed with hammers and knives, who smashed glass cabinets at Michael Hill Jeweller, in Chartwell Shopping Centre, Hamilton. The other five escaped.The New Zealand Herald newspaper reports that "the shop...Read More
(IDEX Online) - De Beers has created a "modern tiara" using 40 carats of diamond from its own mines, with an 8.49-carat pear-shaped gem at the center.It's part the new Metamorphosis high jewelry collection, described as "the most creative and technically challenging collection to date".The four-stranded tiara is crafted from colored titanium and platinum and features a set of six additional f...Read More
(IDEX Online) - De Beers produced 8.9m carats in Q1 of this year, exactly the same as Q1 last year, according to figures released today by parent company Anglo American.Production was up almost 10 per cent on Q4 2022 (8.2m carats). Production in Q3 2022 was 9.6m carats.Overall output was impacted by the transition from open pit to underground mining at Venetia, in South Africa, where production wa...Read More
(IDEX Online) - One of the world's largest tsavorite garnets has gone on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, in Washington DC, USA.The 116.76-carat, 177-facet Lion of Merelani is the largest precision-cut tsavorite in the world, and the largest tsavorite gem ever cut in the US.Tsavorite is a precious gemstone first discovered by famed geologist Campbell Bridg...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Police in Canada are investigating the theft of gold and other valuables worth US$15m in what is believed to be the country's biggest ever heist of its kind.A cargo container packed with gold and other "items of monetary value" was stolen from a warehouse near Toronto Pearson International Airport (pictured) that was reportedly unmanned by airport security.Police have revealed...Read More
(IDEX Online) - De Beers has filled the decommissioned Victor diamond mine, in northern Ontario, Canada, with almost 12 billion gallons of water and turned it into a lake.Virtually nothing now remains of the mine, which opened in 2008 and closed in May 2019.Over its life, more than 8.2 million carats of diamonds were recovered at Victor. It was identified in 1987 as Canada's first economicall...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Storm Mountain Diamonds (SMD) has recovered the biggest ever pink diamond by far from its Kao mine, in Lesotho.The 108.39-carat Type IIa fancy intense pink stone (pictured) is more than twice the weight of the 47.81-carat Pink Eternity, which was recovered last year and sold for an undisclosed price.Mohlomi Moleko, Lesotho's minister of natural resources, described the newly-r...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Antwerp's 500-year-old diamond industry, and the Haredi (ultra-orthodox Jewish) community with which it is inextricably linked, come under scrutiny in Rough Diamonds, an eight-part crime drama now airing on Netflix.Neither get an easy ride, at least in the early episodes. It follows the struggles and strife of the prominent (and fictional) Wolfson family, in a mix of (subtitle...Read More
(IDEX Online) - Jewelry manufacturers will display their goods next month at the first IGI D Show outside India.The event, launched in India in 2011 by Antwerp-based International Gemological Institute, will take place in Dubai.Over 100,000 designs from 33 jewelry manufacturers will be displayed at the show's first international edition. Representatives from more than 150 prominent retail bra...Read More