Twitter

Jewellery and Coins

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

‘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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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).

Read more

Royal Canadian Mint still foresees vital role as demand for coins inevitably declines – by Amanda Stephenson (CTV News/Canadian Press – March 10, 2023)

https://www.ctvnews.ca/

CALGARY – Whether they’re rattling around in your car’s cup holder or have vanished permanently into the couch cushions, coins are easy to take for granted.So when the Royal Canadian Mint announced a round of layoffs last month at its Winnipeg facility, it was a reminder that the change jingling in our pockets doesn’t get there by magic.

Those loonies and toonies and quarters and dimes are produced by the Mint, a Crown corporation that produces all of Canada’s circulation coins out of one state-of-the-art facility in the Manitoba capital.

Read more

Hidden camera reveals false claims some retailers make during diamond sales – by Katie Pedersen, Jeremy McDonald, Katie Swyers, Rosa Marchitelli (CBC News – February 17, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/

While shopping undercover at some of Canada’s top jewellers, Marketplace journalists came across sales pitches filled with false claims and inconsistent diamond grading reports, all of which could lead consumers to question whether they got what they paid for.

Last year, Canadians who purchased a diamond ring spent on average just over $4,300, according to Edahn Golan Diamond Research & Data Ltd. Marketplace journalists posed as secret shoppers to capture the sales pitch on hidden camera at three of Canada’s most popular value retail jewelry chains: Peoples Jewellers, Ben Moss Jewellers, and Michael Hill, visiting three locations for each retailer in Ontario and Alberta.

Read more

Queen Consort Camilla will wear a recycled crown, without cursed diamond – by William Booth (Washington Post – February 14, 2023)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/

LONDON — Camilla, the Queen Consort, will wear a recycled crown at the coronation — and not the one showcasing the fabled Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of the world’s largest and most controversial gems, said by folklore to be cursed and by India to have been purloined.

When Camilla is crowned alongside her husband, the new King Charles III, at Westminster Abbey on May 6, she will wear the headpiece worn by Queen Mary at the 1911 coronation, Buckingham Palace said Tuesday.

Read more

Police recover $1 million worth of gold and silver after teenagers get caught mid-heist in Toronto – by Anna Golubova (Kitco News – January 23, 2023)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) Police in Toronto recovered $967,811 (CAD $1.295 million) worth of precious metals after four teenage boys got caught “in the act” of robbing a store last month.

According to the police, three masked teenagers entered a precious metals store on Bloor Street in Toronto as the fourth suspect waited in the car. “On December 10, 2022, at 2:15 p.m., three masked suspects entered a precious metals store … with a firearm.

Read more

Fire. Rainbow. Peacock. They’re All Opals. – by Janelle Conaway (New York Times – January 22, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Other precious gems are more valuable. ‘But in beauty,’ one miner said, ‘there is no stone that can be compared to it.’

LA TRINIDAD, Mexico — Héctor Montes has been around opals his entire life and has held a concession from the Mexican government to mine the stone for 40 years. But at 76, he said he could still feel a rush of adrenaline when he picked up a raw opal that had an especially promising glint — he never knows what it will look like in its finished state.

“There are no two alike,” he said of the stones he shapes and polishes. His workshop, strewn with rocks and lapidary equipment, is part of the family opal business that he runs in this community of about 2,500 residents in the central Mexican state of Querétaro, one of the two main regions in the country where opal is mined today.

Read more

Tarnished nickel is determined to stay – by Jennifer Cole (Toronto Star- January 4, 2023)

https://www.thestar.com/

Despite its diminished consumer shine, the nickel is determined to stay

In 2016 the financial group Desjardins suggested the Canadian nickel should be abolished. The gradual increase in the cost of living and decreased buying power of small coins made the nickel worthless to the consumer. And yet over five years later and the five-cent coin is hanging in there. Why is perplexing?

Once upon a time, way back in the middle of the last century, the coin found prestige and use at the five-and-dime store — the equivalent of today’s Dollar Store. Household items, toys and candy were all within the price point of the nickel.

Read more

Roman Coins Thought for Centuries to Be Fakes Get a Fresh Appraisal – by April Rubin (New York Times – November 27, 2022)

https://www.nytimes.com/

New research suggests that the gold coins, which were found in 1713 and long dismissed as forgeries, may be authentic.

In 1713, a medals inspector documented the acquisition of eight gold Roman coins that had been buried in Transylvania. For centuries, experts believed them to be forgeries — and poorly made ones, at that.

The coins featured the image of an otherwise unknown leader and characteristics that differed from other mid-third century Roman coins. But now researchers who have re-examined the coins, which were in a collection at the University of Glasgow, say they may, in fact, be authentic.

Read more