Russia’s Ministry of Finance held an auction on the premises of Gokhran, the State Repository of the Russian Federation, to sell special size diamonds weighing 10.8 carats or more in the domestic market, the PRIME News Agency reported citing Gokhran.
"Of the 556 diamonds with a total mass of 12,595 carats put up for sale Gokhran sold 525 stones totally weighing 12,056 carats and worth over $26.025 million," the spokesman of the state agency said.
According to PRIME, Gokhran accepted applications for the auction until March 2, 2012 and announced its results on March 20. Of the 39 diamond-cutting companies that have applied for the auction, only 35 took part in the bidding and 30 turned to be real buyers of gems. Mostly, stones were bought by OOO Ayves, OOO Kronus Diamond and OOO Ruiz Diamond.
"The main difference between this auction and any other previous auction is that this time all the stones were introduced one by one: in the past, Gokhran used to compile lots consisting of several rocks and then they were put up for sale," said the spokesman.
According to him, "these results are very good and we are extremely pleased with them – this means that the market is alive and won’t collapse, as many predicted." "So far it is difficult to say if there will be another auction this year. Let's see how the market will behave. We shall be able to be more or less specific about it only, say, at the end of May," he said.
In 2011, the Russian State Depository held a similar auction, which offered 986 diamonds split between 243 lots and totally weighing 20,000 carats. “We have not seen such a buying rush over the entire history of our auctions. We sold everything earning $57.973 million. This was also a fantastic amount of money for us,” the state agency told at that time speaking to PRIME.
The recent auction was attended by 44 diamond-cutting factories and 24 of them turned to be winners. OOO Ayves, OOO Kronus Diamond and OOO Ruiz Diamond bought the majority of offered diamonds.
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