Image credit: Kaliningrad Amber Combine
The Kaliningrad Amber Combine (part of the Rostec State Corporation) announced an online auction of exclusive amber to be held on October 27 at 12:00 local time (13:00 Moscow time) online. The bidding will take place on the electronic trading platform of the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange.
The auction will roll out 54 lots for sale - 19 amber nuggets, each weighing more than one kilogram, and 35 amber pieces with inclusions of animal and vegetable origin. The starting price of the lots is 10.9 million rubles. The bidding will be held according to an increasing-price pattern. Bidding for nuggets will be conducted at an increment of 10 000 rubles, while the bidding increment for amber pieces with inclusions is set at 200 rubles.
Of the nuggets for sale, 11 have "names". The tradition of assigning names to amber heavyweights at the plant has existed since 2018. As a rule, the choice of a name is influenced by the date of discovery or the shape of a stone. For example, the Antarctica nugget mined on August 6, 2020, and now put up for auction was named because of its shape resembling the outlines of the coldest continent on Earth. Unique amber "V. Tretyak" is named after the legendary hockey player who visited the Amber Combine shortly before. The Chagall nugget bears the name of famous painter Marc Chagall. The "Thirty-Ninth" nugget was named after the Kaliningrad Province code, which is 39 (this number denotes a very far away land in Russian fairy tales).
Participants in the auction can also become owners of treasures named EXPO, Journalist, Salute, Enlightened, Radonezhsky, Mir, and Strelets. By the way, Strelets (Archer) was unearthed on the same day with another giant on September 16, 2020, when the country celebrated State Guard Day in Russia. Before the formation of a separate service in this country, the security functions were performed by the palace archers, in whose honor the nugget was named, which is the second-largest among those offered for sale weighing 2,228 grams.
The heaviest one weighing 2 262 grams does not have a name, as it was mined in 2017 before the corporate tradition of giving names to amber nuggets was introduced. This nugget has the highest starting price - over 1 million rubles. The "smallest" nugget of those presented weighing 1 007 grams is estimated at 330 000 rubles.
The largest amber piece with inclusions put up for auction weighs 70.8 grams - an unusually heavyweight for this type of stones. The unique specimen contains fragments of prehistoric flora - plant fibers, bark, pollen. The starting price of this lot exceeds 49 900 rubles. The lowest starting price of 1 011 rubles is set for a transparent stone weighing 3.9 grams, inside which single particles of plants and insects are visible.
The nuggets may be purchased by companies and individual entrepreneurs from Russia. Amber pieces with inclusions may be bought by anyone - Russian and foreign individuals and legal entities.
Anyone can follow the progress of the auction in real-time. The online session will start at the specified time on a specially created electronic platform in the Trade Section. Detailed information on lots with photographs is presented in the Catalog Section. Bidders can register on the electronic trading platform. All the necessary information and documents are also posted on the official website of the Kaliningrad Amber Combine.
Vladimir Malakhov, Rough&Polished
