Antony Dear began his career in the diamond business in 1991, starting on the rough diamond sorting floors at De Beers in London and later becoming one of the company’s diamond buyers in various countries in Africa. In the early 2000s, he came to live in Antwerp, Belgium, and became involved with BHP Billiton Diamonds in rough diamond sales, auctions and tenders as an alternative to the traditional sight system.
In 2014, Antony joined the Arkhangelsk-based Grib Diamonds and helped the diamond miner set up the same type of auction system that BHP had used previously.
In 2023, Antony together with Jamal Akhtar started a new auction company - Billiton Diamond Auctions. It uses similar systems to those created for his prior major diamond producers to hold viewings and sales on behalf of miners and traders in Dubai and Antwerp. The business partners have also developed Preshys, a gemstone inventory management system for miners, traders and manufacturers.
Antony is experienced in all the available diamond trading systems to date such as sights, window sales, tenders, auctions and polishing partnerships with manufacturers.
In an exclusive interview with Rough&Polished, Antony Dear speaks about the current state of diamond auctions and tenders, shares his views on pricing transparency and building confidence in the diamond value chain.
De Beers has had its Sightholder system in place from 1930s, and ever since its market monopoly collapsed, may other diamond trading systems were established. What is the state of diamond auctions in 2025?
Diamond auctions are thriving, barely a week goes by when there is not a large sale in Dubai, Gaborone or Antwerp by Bonas, Burgundy, Koin, TAGS, ODC, Stargems, Billiton, the list is long. There are a mix of different types also, with some preferring static Tenders and some (ODC, Burgundy, Billiton, Stargems) preferring dynamic auctions, with valuable price discovery mechanisms built in. There will, at some point, be further developments on top of this, whereby I expect platforms to start to use the power of blockchain and Real World Assets to offer, at least in the polished area, more access to the proliferating crypto wallets all over the world.
Just recently, HB Antwerp’s co-founder Oded Mansori argued that diamond miners rely on tender and auction systems that look efficient on paper, but are opaque in practice. What is your opinion on this statement?
Well, firstly he didn’t really put an argument forth, more of a statement. I had a quiet chuckle to myself when I read this and imagined myself in an Orwellian world of "War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength" whereby the opposite of reality is stated by those with influence as a truth. How is it possible that a competitive, open and transparent bidding platform where prices are known to all can possibly be said to be more opaque than a closed, private sales system where prices are unknown? It wasn’t that long ago, in H2 2020, when diamond producers had no idea what prices to try and sell their products at, and the Tender and Auction System led the way, in Antwerp firstly then Dubai and eventually Gaborone. This gave confidence back to the market, and normal business resumed because participants could see what prices were being achieved and that business was being done. But it is not just about price transparency, it is also about the democratization of access to supply. It is, in my opinion, anti-competitive to limit access of the world’s rough diamonds to only companies who have ticked certain boxes under a subjective review system.
What are best practices for diamond auctioneers, in your opinion?
I believe that Auction Houses should treat all their customers on an equal footing. Communications should be clear and on time, Terms & Conditions concise and understood by all. A company should be using systems to manage every single process that is undertaken, so that its entire value chain is auditable.
How does your auction house, Billiton Diamond Auctions, achieve transparency in sales? As far as I know, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) has established its Tender Best Practice Forum Code of Conduct, which your company has adopted. What initiatives worldwide can help enhance standards in the diamond trade?
Billiton runs an ascending clock format auction whereby starting prices are given to customers on each lot before the auction begins. Prices are increased in rounds until the supply meets the demand. It is an electronic format of what happens in a Sotheby’s or a Christie’s auction. The Auctioneer continues to raise prices until there is only one bidder remaining and that bidder wins the lot. In our auctions we also have a Vickrey pricing rule, meaning that the winner wins, but pays whatever the second price is. This allows bidders to avoid the Winners Curse feeling they get when winning (in my experience with other pricing formats the winners always want to know what the second price is because they want to feel that they haven’t paid too much over that). This type of auction also allows price discovery. It gives a certain confidence to people bidding that their bids are not out of line with the market, as there are usually several other bidders with similar bids in the rounds and the customers can see that there are other bidders (but not who) at the end of each round. This method is used by ODC, Burgundy and some others, but basically it allows you to see what goods are sold for.
Releasing sales prices is the one thing I think should be a minimum standard everywhere. I do not think it is right to ask customers to bid on items and not show them the price at which they sold if they are unsuccessful.
The natural diamond market has been facing various disruptions over the past few years, ranging from cannibalisation of market share by lab-grown diamonds, to price slump and tariff wars. How does Billiton manage to navigate in these tough conditions?
Well, it is not easy that is for sure. We have tried to pivot and to be flexible with our business model. We have concentrated on developing platforms such as www.preshys.com to help diamond and gemstone companies manage their inventories, to price their goods and to sell their goods. We are also deeply into the blockchain space, developing new tools to sell diamonds. We are also looking into the coloured gemstone market, which, unlike diamonds, has not suffered to date from these external pressures. The prices for Rubies, Sapphires, Emeralds, Spinel and certain segments of Tourmaline (Paraiba) and Garnet (Mandarin) have shown strong price increases over the last few years and show no signs of stopping. Furthermore, most of these gemstones also have had synthetic versions available for over 100 years already, you can buy synthetic ruby and sapphire for less than $10 from some Chinese suppliers now. So, I have faith that there will continue to be a bifurcation between natural and synthetic diamonds and that it will eventually work its way through the system and that people will return to natural diamonds in large numbers.
Was there a shift in the diamond trade because of recent tariff disruptions? Did rough diamond buyers change their preferences?
Yes, they did, rough diamonds that were more immune to the cost per carat of labour (bigger more valuable stones), held their prices somewhat or at least were not affected like the smaller cheaper goods were. Prices for smaller goods have collapsed due to this tariff uncertainty.
You have developed an inventory management system for gemstone miners, traders and manufacturers. What are the benefits of utilizing such a system in a gemstone business?
Any company involved in diamonds should want to have a system to manage their inputs (intake of stock), transformational processes (pricing and sales assembly or polishing and manufacturing), and sales (Invoicing and customer data). A system in 2025 should be cloud-based and not at risk from local server breakdown or malfunction. It is also easy for a simple API to be written by one of the diamond traceability companies to transfer data automatically on the life cycle of the stones in production from the Preshys system to whatever blockchain platform is being used. There is going to be more and more detail required at the retail end on this value chain and it serves little purpose if your traceability only goes back to when the parcel was assembled in an excel spreadsheet just before putting in an auction.
In the past, you worked with Grib Diamonds (a Belgian subsidiary of AGD Diamonds from Arkhangelsk), which fell under U.S. sanctions. From 2013 to 2024, the Central African Republic was under a Kimberley Process embargo on rough diamond exports. In your opinion, are sanctions against diamond producers effective, and how do they influence the rough diamond trading?
Well in our case the sanctions were very effective, Grib ceased all trading in Antwerp and the goods are now sold elsewhere. But I suppose that is not what you really mean by effective. Those goods are now sold in other jurisdictions, so I suppose the sanctions just move them to another place, although from what I hear, the prices being achieved are discounted now heavily to market.
What is your prediction on the future of the diamond industry? Are there any signs of recovery?
It is difficult right now to see signs of recovery. A large Auction House recently announced a closed Tender bidding process but then signalled that it would be keeping prices high (and the market understood this as unrealistically high) so customers responded by purchasing zero goods. As far as I am concerned if you wish to sell goods into the market you must accept market prices, if your cost is higher than the market is willing to pay, then your error was in purchasing, not in selling. Especially if those goods have been in your safe doing nothing for two years because you refused to take a small loss earlier as you thought you knew better than the market. Take the loss and move on, be better next time. We need to be better at not sitting on goods, mines are cost intensive, and costs are fixed so cashflow needs to be constant and sizeable.
But yes, I have confidence that things will change, India and the USA should be able to work out their differences and reduce these tariffs. The issue with synthetics will eventually fall away as the price for synthetics decreases to a point where it will be seen like costume jewellery and the investment in category marketing should help us, in the medium term, to come out of these doldrums.
Theodor Lisovoy, Managing Editor, Rough&Polished
