Jewelry Blog

The hope diamond is one of those truly unique gems. One of it’s coolest features is that it glows a red-orange in ultraviolet light. And even cooler, it will continue to glow for up to 5 minutes once it is removed from the UV source.

Researchers have discovered that all blue diamonds phosphoresce, and that glow is so unique that a spectroscopic examination can be used to identify each individual blue diamond. It can even be used to separate lab grown blue diamonds from natural blue diamonds.

You can read more about this at the Science Daily.

I apologize for the down time this evening. We decided to move away from the voting process front end to promote new news items. Of the readers polled the vast majority didn’t want to take the time to register to vote, and I don’t really blame them, it was another cool tech idea that really didn’t need to be implemented here.

We reverted to more of a blog style method of posting news to the website. This gives you the Tip of the Day (mostly) feed and now the Jewelry News feed that you can subscribe to if you prefer to read the latest in news and tips in an RSS reader.

There are still a few minor adjustments to be made, and I need import the news from the old format, but we are back up and operational. Thank you for your patience.

Steve -

How cool would it be to go out for lunch, order some clams, and bite in to a pearl potentially worth thousands of dollars?

A Lake Worth, Florida man was spending a day at the beach with his wife when he decided that a nice meal at Dave’s Last Resort was a good idea. About half way through his meal he discovered just how good of an idea it really was. He bit down in to a rare purple pearl.

Natural pearls are rare and finding one of such a color makes it even more so. For a $10 lunch his find could be worth thousands, so the Brocks plan to have the pearl appraised and have said they will sell it if it is valuable.

All I know is that I’ll have what he’s having.

On Saturday French auction house Guizzetti-Collet sold a 6.5 carat blue diamond for €2.43 million ($3.56 million), which totaled $547,692 per carat. The hammer price came to more than three times the stone’s estimated value of between €500,000 and €700,000.

The Reims-based auction house said that the “blue intense homogenous” diamond with “extraordinary” coloration, was taken from a ring bought in 1962 by the owners of a champagne house.

An international company specializing in buying precious stones placed the winning bid by phone, according to AFP. The company’s name was not released.

It’s not often old eggs are sold for very much, but when it’s a 105 year old Faberge Egg covered in pink diamonds there may be an exception. The egg, which also features a miniature clock and a rooster flapping his wings, drew a final price of a staggering $18.5 million, shattering the previous Faberge Egg record of $9.6 million sold in 2002.

Originally created in 1902, this particular egg was purchased by an unnamed Russian collector and it marks a continued return of Russian art to it’s original home in Russia as more and more Russian collectors have he ability to recover them.

Have you ever asked yourself why it is some people like to wear religious jewelry? Many believe that it nothing more than a display of their religious beliefs. Could it be more than that? Here’s a few things to think about…

ChainzOnline.Com

The massive 493 carat rough diamond was sold to Graff Jewellers of London for $10.4 million. That’s an amazing $21,000 per carat against the average of $81 per carat for most rough diamonds.

Named the Letseng Legacy for the Letseng le Terai mine is was found in, the diamond joins the recently sold Lesotho Promise, an 84.37 carat round brilliant diamond in Graff Jewellers growing collection of rare and exquisite diamonds.

Rio Tinto Diamonds 23rd annual Argyle pink diamond tender has set record breaking prices. Every year Rio Tinto sells the year’s harvest of pink diamonds from purpleish reds to deep pinks.

This year 65 diamonds were tendered and sold to 17 bidders. While exact prices are not being disclosed, Rio commented that such diamonds are known to command more than $400,000 per carat.

The 2007 Argyle Signature Stones tender attracted approximately 100 bidders due to several very rare finds, including a rare grey-violet diamond and sever deep purplish-red diamonds.

The Argyle mine currently supplies roughly 90% of the world’s pink diamonds and the Argyle Signature Stones are the pick of the very best.