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Jewellery and Coins

Seeing is believing: what stone enhancements are acceptable? – by Christa Van Eerde (The Jewellery Editor – March 12, 2019)

https://www.thejewelleryeditor.com/

The aim of this article is to explain the most common enhancements or treatments for the ‘big three’, which are acceptable and within what parameters.

Most of the ‘big three’ gemstones – emeralds, rubies and sapphires – are in some way enhanced or treated. Only the very pure, perfectly coloured and flawless can escape any type of enhancement, and this is reflected in their record-breaking prices. Perfection comes at a cost; the most valuable untreated ruby, the 25.59-carat Sunrise Ruby (below) fetched $30.3 million, which is just over $1 million per carat at Sotheby’s in Geneva in May 2015, far outstripping any price paid for a colourless diamond.

The same is true for top quality emeralds and sapphires, the more naturally perfect, the more valuable. But as not every stone is perfect, I explore the range of treatments and within which parameters they are acceptable to make the right choice when buying an emerald, sapphire or ruby. As gem treatments vary considerably and though sellers are ethically obliged to disclose if a gemstone has been treated, here is my advice on red flags to look for when buying a gem.

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Thousand-year-old coins found buried in Poland (Notes From Poland – August 22, 2023)

Notes from Poland

Archaeologists excavating the site of a medieval fortress in the town of Wiślica in southern Poland have uncovered a collection of coins believed to be almost 1,000 years old.

When work finished two days ago, the team revealed that they have discovered 12 silver coins. Eleven are from the period of Bolesław the Bold – who was first duke and then king of Poland between 1058 and 1079 – and one likely to be from the time of Władysław Herman, who was duke of Poland in 1079-1102.

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An engagement ring or a home down payment? Why some young couples are proposing with lab diamonds. – by Erin McCarthy (Philadelphia Inquirer – August 22, 2023)

https://www.inquirer.com/

Even jewelers can’t tell the difference between lab and mined diamonds with the naked eye. More than a third of couples married last year went with lab-grown engagement rings.

Years before Jasmine Ma and her fiancé, Ricky Chen, stepped foot into a jewelry store — before they had even talked seriously about marriage — Ma made one thing clear: She didn’t want a mined-diamond engagement ring.

“If he was going to put his money toward this, I’d prefer he get something lab-grown,” she said. Not only would they be able to get a larger stone for less money, but she’d also feel better about the decision ethically, Ma said she told him, due to diamond mining’s history of human rights violations.

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Metal detectorists unearth 2,000-year-old gold coins in Wales – by Neils Christensen (Kitco News – August 16, 2023)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – Three British metal detectorists are celebrating the find of a lifetime after unearthing a hoard of 2,000-year-old coins in North-Western Wales, which could provide new clues about commercial activity in the region during the Iron Age.

The treasure hunters found a total of 15 ancient gold coins known as staters in a field on the Isle of Anglesey between July 2021 and March 2022. These are the first Iron Age gold coins to have been discovered in Wales, said the Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales in a press release.

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German police find melted-down gold after theft of Celtic coins, seek rest of treasure – by Geir Moulson (Associated Press/Toronto Star – July 23, 2023)

https://www.thestar.com/

BERLIN (AP) — Investigators looking into the theft of hundreds of ancient gold coins from a German museum have found lumps of gold that appear to have resulted from part of the treasure being melted down, but still hold out hope of finding the rest intact, officials said Thursday.

Four suspects were arrested on Tuesday over the Nov. 22 break-in at the Celtic and Roman Museum in the Bavarian town of Manching in which 483 Celtic coins discovered during an archaeological dig in 1999 were stolen. The coins date to around 100 B.C.

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Long-lost Ship Found in the Desert Laden with Gold – by Tasos Kokkinidis (Greek Reporter – July 12, 2023)

https://greekreporter.com/

The discovery of a ship that disappeared five hundred years ago and was found in a desert in southwest Africa with gold coins aboard has been one of the most exciting archaeological finds of recent years. The Bom Jesus (The Good Jesus) was a Portuguese vessel that set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on Friday, March 7, 1533. Its fate was unknown until 2008 when its remains were discovered in the desert of Namibia during diamond mining operations near the coast of the African nation.

When it sank in a fierce storm, it was on its way to India laden with treasures like gold and copper ingots. Two-thousand pure gold coins and tens of thousands of pounds of copper ingots were discovered on the Bom Jesus, almost all intact.

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When It Comes to Rubies, Is Mozambique the New Star? – by Nazanin Lankarani (New York Times – July 2, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

The $34.8 million auction price for a gem discovered in the East African country has the jewelry industry buzzing.

Rubies are like caviar: Their origin is an important part of their market value. Until a month ago, anyone interested in buying a big ruby knew with certainty that Myanmar, formerly called Burma, produced the most valuable stones.

For eight centuries the gems in a deep red shade known as “pigeon’s blood” found in the legendary Mogok mines had reigned supreme, attracting prices far higher than rubies from Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam or East African countries such as Madagascar, Tanzania and Kenya.

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Labs of luxury: Quality diamonds are now being made by technicians, but can a synthetic gem replace the allure of the real thing? – by Nicolas Van Praet (Globe and Mail – July 22, 2022)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The biggest challenge for lab-grown diamond producers is finding and hiring enough skilled scientists and technicians to make them quickly and reliably enough in quality and quantity to meet orders

Earlier this year, Frédéric Arnault, the lanky twentysomething head of LVMH’s Tag Heuer brand and potential heir to the Paris-based luxury empire, presented a novelty at the Watches and Wonders fair in Geneva that would have been previously unthinkable for a company dealing in the real and rare: a 350,000-Swiss-franc ($470,000) timepiece featuring diamonds grown in a laboratory.

The glitzy little number, named the Carrera Plasma, is the most expensive product in the 160-year history of Swiss-based Tag Heuer. It boasts a 44-millimetre sandblasted aluminum case set with 48 diamonds and a rhodium-plated brass base dial covered with a single block of polycrystalline diamond.

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What Is The Future Of Lab-grown Diamond Jewellery? – by Rory Bunker (Scoop Business – July 4, 2023)

https://www.scoop.co.nz/

Those who have shopped for jewellery recently may have been presented with the option of a more affordable, laboratory-grown diamond. Some retailers present lab-grown (synthetic) diamonds to consumers as a more ethical and sustainable alternative to mined diamonds.

Technological advancements mean that lab-grown diamonds, which were once economically unviable to produce in large quantities, have begun to be produced at scale as the costs to produce man-made diamonds have fallen dramatically in recent years.

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Modi Gifts Jill Biden Lab-Grown Diamond Made In Surat – by Darshan Desai (Free Press Journal – June 22, 2023)

https://www.freepressjournal.in/

Grown in Green Lab, the diamond was delicately cut and polished into a round shape specifically for the purpose of gifting.

Surat: The green lab-grown diamond gifted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the first lady of the United States, Jill Biden, has been cut and polished in diamond hub Surat in Gujarat. The 7.5 carat diamond was grown at the renowned Green Lab in the city’s Ichhapore Gems and Jewellery Park.

Sources close to Mukesh Patel, the chairman of Green Lab, said he was elated that Modi picked a lab-grown diamond produced in his state-of-the-art facility that runs on green energy. Grown in Green Lab, the diamond was delicately cut and polished into a round shape specifically for the purpose of gifting it to Jill Biden. However, the sources refused to divulge the value of the diamond.

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‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ Review: Brilliant Diamond Doc Reveals What Could Burst the Bauble Bubble – by Peter Debrug (Yahoo Finance – February 13, 2022)

https://finance.yahoo.com/

It takes perhaps a billion years to make a diamond, and just 87 minutes to shatter so many of the misconceptions audiences have about them in “Nothing Lasts Forever.” Make that eight minutes. That’s roughly the point at which jewelry designer (and “Stone” author) Aja Raden — the only woman interviewed in Jason Kohn’s wild, decade-long delve into the secretive world of the diamond industry — offers up this gem: “The truth about diamonds is: They’re all exactly the same, and none of them are really worth anything.”

For some, that revelation could hit with the force of being told there’s no Santa Claus, even though it’s been an open secret for ages. Most audiences probably already have some inkling of how the De Beers diamond cartel took a not-particularly-rare stone and infused it with value by cornering the market, stockpiling most of the world’s supply and controlling the release at such a rate as to set the price.

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Top jewelry pieces fall short of target prices at Christie’s auction derided by Jewish groups – by Jamey Keaten (Associated Press/San Diego Union Tribune – May 10, 2023)

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/

GENEVA — A ruby ring and a diamond necklace fetched less than their pre-sale estimates at a Christie’s auction Wednesday of a vast jewelry collection of a late Austrian heiress that was bought with riches from a retail empire dating back to the Nazi era in Germany. Jewish groups criticized the auction.

The auction house defended the sale of some 700 pieces of jewelry. saying proceeds are going to charitable causes, including a Vienna art museum and medical research. The collection belonged to Heidi Horten, whose German husband built a retail empire starting in the 1930s. She died last year.

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What jewels will King Charles III use in his coronation? – by Kenichi Serino (PBS News Hour – May 5, 2023)

https://www.pbs.org/

The world will be watching as King Charles III formally ascends the British throne in a coronation ceremony Saturday, just as his own mother, Elizabeth II, did 70 years ago. From monarch to monarch now passes the crown – actually, a few of them.

The jewels that adorn that regalia, including some of the largest diamonds in the world, are seen as some of Britain’s greatest treasures and help lend powerful symbolism to this ancient ritual. But their histories tell a more complicated story – some steeped in the legacy of colonialism.

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Trove of 1,000-year-old Viking coins unearthed by young girl in Denmark – by Sarah Do Couto (Global News – April 21, 2023)

https://globalnews.ca/

When most people go metal detecting, they typically find a few dimes, pop cans and if they’re really lucky, a lost piece of jewelry. An unnamed young girl in Denmark found much more than that when she unearthed a hoard of nearly 300 silver coins believed to be over 1,000 years old while using a metal detector in a cornfield last autumn.

The coins, as per the Historical Museum of North Jutland in Denmark, were discovered close to the Fyrkat Viking fortress site near the town of Hobro, in northwestern part of the country.

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The View from England: Famous gems being both flaunted and hidden – by Chris Hinde (Northern Miner – April 20, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

By now you should have received your invitation to the coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as king and queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms. If you are at Westminster Abbey on May 6 (or watching, having mislaid your invitation) you will see a sparkling parade, but not the Koh-i-noor diamond.

One of the world’s most famous gems, the 106 carat Koh-i-noor (Persian for ‘Mountain of Light’) will not be used by Camilla. Instead, Queen Mary’s crown will be modified using diamonds from Queen Elizabeth II’s personal collection, including three of the stones cut from the largest gem-quality diamond ever found (South Africa’s 3,106 carat Cullinan).

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