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A career in medicine was in the cards for Brinder Singh Dhatt. But frustrated with a life dominated by textbooks, he decided to leave his university studies in 2022. “It was a bold decision,” he reflects. “STEM was all I knew.”
He began to spend his time in auction rooms instead, buying and selling objects for family and friends. Sometimes it might be a signed letter, but more often than not, it was a piece of jewelry. Dhatt had no family connections to the jewelry industry, but he found himself becoming fascinated with antique and vintage jewels, and he turned his analytical brain to learning everything he could.
By the following year, at the age of 21, he’d set up Hilden Fine Jewellery & Antiques and started building up stock: “I buy across the board, but I’m really focused on diamond-heavy, Victorian jewelry.” To get started, he simply walked into jewelers in London’s prestigious Mayfair area and introduced himself. While he admits it was difficult, as a young person, to get such storied businesses to take him seriously at first, he did make sales.
Dhatt’s business has since evolved. Now 24, he has clients in the United States as well as London, and while he prefers to sell to other dealers — “They’ll look at it and they’ll be like, yes, no…it’s quick” — he enjoys sourcing hard-to-find items for private clients. “Recently someone came to me and [said they] wanted a Cartier Snoopy pendant; they couldn’t find it anywhere,” he says. “I was able to find it with a dealer and was also able to find it in someone’s personal collection.” The small gold charm had a price tag of $35,000.
In a bid to raise his profile within the antique jewelry scene and showcase his expertise, Dhatt took to Instagram in 2024, developing a persona called The Jewel Geek. Slick, professional videos take viewers behind the scenes at museums and antique stores, with Dhatt as the knowledgeable host.
It has been a phenomenally successful strategy. Besides helping him gain the professional respect and recognition he craves from more seasoned dealers, which has brought in new clients for Hilden, his online presence has given him a community of 37,000 followers who look to him for educational content about vintage and antique jewelry. Dhatt is not monetizing The Jewel Geek at present, although this could well change in the future.
“[This is] a very tough industry for young people to be taken seriously,” he says. “People assume that if you’re young, you don’t really know what you’re talking about, or you’re not that well-versed in the history of the jewelry. But a lot of the younger dealers I know, they’re so talented and knowledgeable.”
Main image: Brinder Singh Dhatt. (The Jewel Geek)
