The world’s largest pearl – weighing 27.65kg and valued at $98m is currently being displayed at a secret venue in Canada.
The Giga Pearl belongs to Toronto-based artist Abraham Reyes and is being shown as part of his Beneath The Surface exhibition of pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones.
The pearl was created 1,000 years ago by a giant clam, the largest of all bivalve molluscs (soft-bodied sea creatures with a hinged shell).
It has been certified by the GIA as the world’s largest natural blister pearl and holds the Guinness World Record.
Reyes inherited the pearl in 2019 from a great aunt after his grandfather bought it from a fisherman in the Philippines.
“I wanted to educate people about it,” Reyes said. “A lot of people don’t know that these giant clams exist because they’re endemic in the South Pacific. So this is something fascinating for people here in Toronto.”
The location of the Giga Pearl is being kept private for security reasons.
Chopard has unveiled a high jewelry collection crafted from one of the world’s largest emeralds.
The Swiss jeweler bought the 6,225-carat monster (1.22kg) from Gemfields in 2018 for an undisclosed sum.
The rough emerald, named Insofu -“elephant” in the local Bemba language – has since yielded 850 carats of gem quality emeralds, the first of which now feature in a 15-piece ensemble of necklaces, chokers, rings, earrings, a bracelet, and a watch.
Among the highlights of the Insofu collection are an elephant-shaped pendant with 50 carats of emeralds, and diamonds forming tusks, which can also be worn as a brooch; a Great Gatsby-inspired 4-in-1 necklace featuring a 15.53-carat octagonal emerald and a diamond choker with a 2.50-carat square-cut emerald.
Insofu was recovered by London-based Gemfields at its Kagem mine, in Zambia.
At the time Gemfields CEO Ian Harebottle said: “This is a unique find. The Insofu displays wonderful color and good translucency. Its sheer size, rich color and fine protective biotite shell makes it difficult to see deep into the gem.
“However, all indications suggest that the core of the emerald is competent and that it should yield a number of cut gems of significant size.”
It’s hard to swallow. In fact most of us would probably choke trying to down over 13 carats of Tiffany’s finest diamonds.
But that, allegedly, is how Jaythan Lawrence Gilder, aged 32, responded when cops in the US finally caught up with him last week.
He swallowed two pairs of earrings that had been stolen a couple of days earlier from the Tiffany & Co store at the Mall of Millenia, in Orlando, Florida, according to an arrest affidavit.
The Orlando Police Department say X-rays taken in custody appear to confirm their suspicions, though at the time of writing they were waiting for nature to take its course.
Gilder allegedly posed as the representative of an Orlando Magic basketball player so that he’d be taken to a private room to view high-value items.
Police said he grabbed a pair of 8.19-carat diamond earrings (valued at $609,500), and a 4.86-carat diamond pair (valued at $160,000) together with a ring valued at $587,000 (no description given).
He then pushed past an employee, according to the arrest affidavit, and escaped in a blue 2024 Mitsubishi Outlander.
Two days later he was apprehended by Florida Highway Patrol troopers who spotted his vehicle. He was arrested on 48 outstanding warrants for other offences, but the officers couldn’t immediately locate the stolen Tiffany jewelry.
While in custody, however, Gilder reportedly asked jail staff whether he was going to be charged with “what’s in my stomach”. A scan revealed “foreign objects” that appeared to be the stolen earrings.
“These foreign objects are suspected to be the Tiffany & Co earrings taken in the robbery but will need to be collected by WCSO (Washington County Sheriff’s Office, Florida) after they are passed through Gilder’s system prior to confirming,” the arrest report states.
It is indeed a bizarre crime, but it is not unique. In fact Joan Hannington, aka The Godmother, perfected the technique of diamond swallowing over a long and notorious criminal career.
It started when she was working in a high-end jewelry store in London in the 1970s. Realizing that the surveillance cameras weren’t working, she took a handful of loose diamonds from the safe on impulse and swallowed them. It later turned out they were worth £800,000.
“Swallowing diamonds was my life, my buzz, my drug,” she later wrote in her memoir I Am What I Am.
For the next 20 years she used the same technique – as described in her second memoir, Joan: The True Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Diamond Thief, and as depicted in the fictionalized 2024 TV series Joan.
She’d visit a jewelry store, posing as a wealthy US tourist, often in a fur coat. She’d flirt outrageously with the salesman, while carefully memorizing her target piece.
She’d later return with a cheap but convincing replica, fake a sneeze as she was viewing the piece for a second time, and swallow the genuine item. She’d then sterilize the stolen gems in a bowl of gin and sell them on to a fence.
Hannington, now aged 68, was sentenced to 30 months for possession of a stolen check book when she was 24,but she says she was never jailed for her diamond swallowing escapades. She does however suffer painful ulcers as a long-term consequence.
Sales of watches and jewelry in the US dipped in January, for the first time in well over a year. They were 3.0 per cent less than the previous January, according to the latest figures from the US Department of Commerce.
In addition, revisions to November and December sales figures now show slower growth than originally reported.
Figures based on actual through-the-till transactions, rather than estimates, put sales at +2.6 per cent and +1.5 per cent respectively, rather than the revised figures of +3.0 per cent and +4.0 per cent.
Sales of watches and jewelry had been in positive growth since October 2023, and they peaked last September and October at around 10 per cent. Prior to that they’d been in overall decline since October 2022.
Controversial Australia-based miner Kimberley Diamonds has put its last remaining diamond mine into administration after it failed to secure fresh funding.
Kimberley, which avoided an estimated $40 million clean-up bill after it walked away from its Ellendale mine in Western Australia’s north, shut its Lerala operation in Botswana last week and placed the subsidiary responsible for the project into administration.
Kimberley said in a statement on its website that its subsidiary Lerala Diamond Mines had “no choice” but to place itself into administration after the parent company was unable to strike a new financing deal.
It had earlier stopped day to day operations at Lerala pending an overhaul of the mine’s diamond processing plant. “The successful completion of this performance improvement plant required further funds to be provided by investors and despite considerable progress being made on implementing these improvements, all of the required funds have not been forthcoming,” Kimberley said. “Kimberley has been in discussions with investors regarding further funds for some time, however to date no agreement for further and sufficient funding has been reached and KDL has been forced to cease providing financial support to Lerala.” But the collapse of Lerala won’t kill off the parent. Kimberley said it remained in discussions with investors for further funding and was “exploring corporate restructuring options”.
Kimberley delisted from the ASX earlier this year after a chequered history. The stock enjoyed a charmed run early on, surging from 11c in 2012 to $1.30 in 2013, but fell spectacularly in 2014 when it revealed it had failed to secure a price increase from global jeweller Tiffany & Co that it had already factored into its profit forecasts. Its shares never recovered, and last traded at just 0.7c prior to its delisting.
The company, chaired by former stockbroker Alexandre Alexander, also came under fire for its handling of the closure of Ellendale. The liquidators appointed to the Kimberley subsidiary that held Ellendale used a legal loophole to shift responsibility for the clean-up to the state government’s industry-funded mining rehabilitation fund.
The rehabilitation costs at Ellendale have been estimated at between $28m and $40m. WA’s new Mines and Petroleum Minister Bill Johnston has flagged an overhaul to prevent “rogue elements” taking advantage of the MRF.
Anglo American’s De Beers, the world’s largest rough diamond producer by value, has decided to begin selling its own polished diamonds in auctions for the first time in its history.
The pilot auction, scheduled for June, will include a wide range of polished stones manufactured directly from the company’s own rough diamonds.
“The pilot auction, scheduled for June 29, will include a wide range of polished stones manufactured directly from De Beer’s own rough diamonds.” All the polished rocks will carry grading reports from both the International Institute of Diamond Grading & Research (IIDGR) — De Beers’ in-house grading unit — and the Gemological Institute of America (GIA).
“We are interested in testing the level of demand from polished buyers for diamonds that have a clear and attractive source of origin, and that offer the assurance of product integrity that dual certification provides,” Neil Ventura, the miner’s executive vice president of auction sales, said in the statement.
If successful, the process would provide De Beers with more insight into the polished market, while also helping consumers fill gaps in supply or inventory if they were unable to find goods at the company’s rough auctions, he added.
All registered De Beers auction buyers will be eligible to bid in the first sale, which takes place on June 29.
Profit more than doubled for De Beers last year as trading conditions in the diamond-manufacturing sector improved and inventory levels stabilized.
Underlying earnings jumped to $667 million in 2016 from $258 million a year earlier, parent company Anglo American said in a statement Tuesday. This came as revenue grew 30 percent to 6.07 billion, reflecting a 37-percent hike in rough-diamond sales to $5.6 billion.
The midstream of the diamond industry returned to buying rough after a 2015 slump in demand that resulted from oversupply of polished and inflated rough prices. Manufacturers started working down their polished inventories in the second half of that year before restocking their rough supplies in 2016.
De Beers also lowered prices, with its rough-price index declining 13 percent across 2016. The miner consequently reduced its rough stockpiles during the year, management said. De Beers production fell 5 percent to 27.3 million carats, while sales volume leapt 50 percent to 30 million carats, meaning it sold a larger volume of stones than it mined. “2016 generally was a much better year for the diamond industry,” said Bruce Cleaver, De Beers chief executive officer. “The midstream performed much better than 2015, largely as a result of the strong and decisive action we took in 2015 to reduce production in accordance with demand.
The fruits of that tough action we took in 2015 was seen through 2016.” The company projected production would rise to 31 to 33 million carats in 2017, “because we see the market has recovered from where it was at the end of 2015,” noted Cleaver. The company maintained a conservative outlook for the diamond jewelry market given prevailing global macro-economic conditions and geopolitical risk.
Performance will be dependent on a number of macro issues, including the attitude of the new U.S. administration, the strength of the dollar, continued recovery in China and the impact of Indian demonetization, Cleaver explained. “All other things being equal, we think diamond demand will continue to grow along with GDP growth,” he said. Source: diamonds.net
Lucara Sells Its 813 Carat Diamond for US$63 Million, the Highest Price Ever Achieved for the Sale of a Rough Diamond.
Lucara Sells Its 813 Carat Diamond for US$63 Million, the Highest Price Ever Achieved for the Sale of a Rough Diamond.
Lucara, is pleased to announce that the exceptional 812.77 carat, Type IIa diamond recovered from the Karowe mine in Botswana in November 2015, has been sold for US$63,111,111 (US$77,649 per carat).
As part of the sale, Lucara has partnered with Nemesis International DMCC, and retains a 10% interest in the net profit received from the sale of the resultant polished diamonds.
The 813 carat diamond has been named, “The Constellation”, in collaboration with our partner. Lucara is a well-positioned diamond producer.
The Company’s main producing asset is the 100% owned Karowe Mine in Botswana.
DCLA valuation services for loose or set diamond jewellery. Valuations for insurance or resale with optional cold laser inscription.
Expert Valuation Services for Your Personal Items
Acuval offers professional valuations for your personal items through a network of certified expert valuers. Our signed and certified valuations can be utilized for various purposes, including insurance coverage, asset management, estate planning, resale, auctions, and inheritance.
DCLA Australia’s leading diamond laboratory valuation service now available.
Valued by DCLA experts and therefore guaranteed accurate. Saving you money on your insurance premiums, and putting you back in the same position without compromising on quality.
The DCLA valuation will guarantee the diamond replaced with the prefect like for like stone.
All valuations will include personalised optional Cold Laser inscription on the girdle.
Call DCLA for information or to book you appointment.
