Four hundred years ago, a galleon named Nuestra Señora de Atocha was making a return trip to Spain from the New World when it was hit by a squall and sank along the reefs near the Florida Keys.

This was no ordinary ship. It was packed to the rafters with treasures collected from Bolivia, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, the Caribbean and the Andes. The bounty included 24 tons of silver ingots, 180,000 silver coins, 125 gold bars and discs, 70 pounds of emeralds and a cache of precious natural pearls.

Lost for 363 years, the ship was finally discovered by treasure hunter Mel Fisher with the assistance of some high-profile benefactors, such as chicken magnate Frank Perdue. Fisher and his team would eventually recover artifacts with an estimated value of more than $1 billion, and Perdue was awarded a portion of the spoils, most of which he donated to Delaware Tech and the Smithsonian.

One item that he kept was a rough emerald that he would have cut into a 6.25-carat finished stone and mounted in an engagement ring for the love of his life, Mitzi. He proposed with the octagonal-shaped, step-cut gem in 1988.

The homespun chicken entrepreneur — who coined the phrase, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" — passed away in 2005 at the age of 84.

On December 7, author and philanthropist Mitzi Perdue's 400-year-old historic emerald will hit the auction block at Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels Sale in New York, with all proceeds going to benefit humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. The auction house has set a high estimate at $70,000, but due to the gem's provenance and charitable nature of the offering, it could sell for much more.

According to Artnet News, Mitzi was inspired to support Ukraine after visiting the country this past summer.

“I fell in love with the brave Ukrainian people and left with the deepest desire to do whatever I could to support the war-torn country,” said the human rights activist, who also happens to be the heiress to the Sheraton Hotels fortune (her dad co-founded the chain).

Mitzi told Fox News Digital, "When I was a child, my father told me, ‘The greatest pleasure my money has ever given me is in giving it away.’ I took those words to heart and he became a role model for me for the rest of my life."

The 81-year-old philanthropist holds degrees from Harvard University and George Washington University, is a past president of the 40,000 member American Agri-Women and was one of the U.S. Delegates to the United Nations Conference on Women in Nairobi.

She was a syndicated columnist for 22 years and authored more than 1,800 newspaper and magazine articles on family businesses, food, agriculture, the environment, philanthropy, biotechnology, genetic engineering and women’s health.

Her historic emerald ring will be on public display starting November 30 at Sotheby's in New York City.

Credit: Image courtesy of Sotheby's.

For more than 130 years, the sunken steamer known as the Ship of Gold, rested undisturbed in the Atlantic Ocean 7,200 feet beneath the surface, about 200 miles off the coast of South Carolina.

The side-wheeler, also known as the SS Central America, met its watery demise in 1857 when it got torn up by a hurricane while transporting precious cargo from Panama to Philadelphia via New York City. Onboard were 30,000 pounds of Gold Rush-era treasure and 578 passengers.

Only 153 people survived the disaster and all the cargo was lost. Headlines across the country declared the sinking of the 280-foot SS Central America as the country’s worst peacetime disaster at sea. The loss of the gold cargo was a major factor in the economically devastating financial Panic of 1857 in the United States.

The long-lost ship was back in the news in 1988 when an inventor named Tommy Thompson spearheaded a recovery operation, which involved sending down to the ocean floor a remotely operated vehicle named Nemo. Recovery from the shipwreck site occurred in several stages between 1988-1991 and again in 2014, according to Fred Holabird, president of Holabird Western Americana Collections.

Artifacts from the site included dozens of 1850s gold rings, stickpins, cufflinks, a gold belt buckle, and several recovered pocket watch cases and covers. Some of the recovered rings have heart shapes waiting to be engraved with lovers’ initials once they reached their destination. California gold quartz items, such as cufflinks and brooches, were also found.

“Much of the gold jewelry was part of a commercial shipment, either carried by one of the jewelers on board or by a separate shipment transported on the voyage going to New York," explained Holabird. "Gold nugget stickpins were found still attached to their original thick paper boards, ready for resale on the New York or eastern seaboard jewelry market.”

On December 3, 2022, selected artifacts from the Ship of Gold will highlight a public auction at the Reno Convention Center in Nevada. Bidding will also take place online at www.HolabirdAmericana.com.

A second auction of hundreds of additional artifacts retrieved from the famous shipwreck will be offered in February 2023 (Exact dates to be announced).

“Many collectors have been waiting for these extraordinary items to come on the market since the legendary SS Central America was located in 1988 and Life magazine proclaimed it America’s greatest treasure ever found,” said Holabird.

According to a press release, insurance claims for the loss were paid in the 1850s, and the company that discovered and retrieved the treasure starting in 1988 settled with the insurers and their successors in 1992. With court approval, California Gold Marketing Group acquired clear title to all of that remaining treasure in 1999 as well as all the items recovered in 2014.

Credits: Images courtesy of Holabird Western Americana Collections.

The colossal cushion-cut specimen you see here is the American Golden Topaz, a 22,892-carat Smithsonian resident that's widely recognized as one of the largest faceted gems of any type in the world. It's also a great example of November's official birthstone.

Despite its impressive address, life was not all glitz and glamor for this famous gemstone. In fact, its backstory includes a bunch of twists and turns, including a near-fatal fall barely 10 seconds into the cutting process.

Sourced in Minas Gerais, Brazil, the uncut topaz weighed 26 pounds (about 59,000 carats) and was described as a weathered stream-rounded cobble. The owner was University of Washington sociology professor and amateur rockhound Ed Borgatta, who possessed the basic skills to hone the stone down to 15 pounds, revealing the its rich golden-yellow coloring.

Borgatta eventually put the project in the hands of master cutter Leon Agee. Over the next two years, starting in early 1986, Agee would devote more than 500 hours to cutting and polishing what he privately called "The Beast." He had agreed to take on the project if he could complete the job during his spare time at his own pace.

“When I saw it, I was startled,” Agee told The Spokesman-Review in 1998. “I’d cut a 1,500-carat piece of quartz for a guy in Arkansas, but this was 20 times that size. I was awestruck.”

Working at this scale was a tremendous challenge for Agee. It took him six months to rig a cutting machine that could handle the massive stone.

As he began the cutting process, he used a standard epoxy to adhere the stone to the turntable.

“But 10 seconds into the cutting, the stone popped off and rolled around the top of the machine,” Agee recalled.

Luckily, he was able to snatch the massive stone before it crashed onto his basement floor. The impact could have fractured the stone, rendering the project a complete failure.

Agee resumed his work, this time using a heavy-duty 2-ton epoxy.

According to Agee, the Smithsonian got wind of the project and was interested in obtaining the gem — as long as its finished weight could beat out the then-record-holder, the 21,327-carat Brazilian Princess. (That stone was part of the collection curated by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.)

Agee refused to weigh the gem until his work was completed. In the end, the 172-facet gem tipped the scales at a whopping 22,892 carats (10.09 lbs). About the size of a honeydew melon, the gem outweighed its rival by more than 1,500 carats. No jeweler's scale was equipped to handle a stone of that size, so he sought the help of the nearby Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Benton County, WA, so he could get a precise weight on a laboratory scale.

Agee admitted to The Spokesman-Review that he secretly pre-weighed the gem on a meat scale at a grocery store in Walla Walla and knew he had beaten the Brazilian Princess.

In May of 1988, both Agee and Borgatta were in attendance during the American Golden Topaz's dedication ceremony at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. Exactly 30 years later, in May of 2018, Agee passed away at the age of 85.

The American Golden Topaz is part of a popular family of gemstones that can be seen in a wide array of warm colors, including brownish-yellow, orange-yellow and reddish brown. It’s also found in white, pale green, blue, gold and pink.

In addition to Brazil, topaz is mined in Mexico, Sri Lanka, Africa and China. Topaz is a talisman for the sign of Sagittarius and is the suggested gift for the 23rd or 50th wedding anniversary.

Credit: Image by NMNH Photo Services and digitally enhanced by SquareMoose.

Hey, it's Halloween, so let's take a deep dive into the curious, otherworldly origins of black diamonds — the spookiest variety of the world's hardest material.

Black diamonds are also known as “carbonado diamonds,” and gemologists believe that they likely formed in outer space and were brought to earth by meteorites. Earth-formed diamonds often display a crystal structure, while carbonado diamonds — in their natural, unpolished form — have an irregular surface that resembles charcoal.

Black diamonds are also different than other colored diamonds because they do not get their color from trace amounts of nitrogen, hydrogen or boron in the gem’s chemical makeup. Instead, black diamonds owe their color to numerous dark inclusions (mostly graphite). Their opaqueness is caused by a “polycrystalline” structure that inhibits the reflection of light.

Black diamonds are also known to be "tougher" than conventional diamonds.

Leibish Polnauer, the founder of New York-based Leibish & Co. and world-renowned authority on fancy color diamonds, told us in 2020 that natural black diamonds are extremely difficult to cut and polish.

“Black diamonds are exceptionally hard,” he said. “They actually eat up the polishing wheels.”

A rough diamond is cut and shaped by placing it on a polishing wheel, where a large stone disc covered in a layer of solidified diamond powder rotates and sands down the diamond in short bursts.

Polnauer explained that diamond cutters use diamond powder on their polishing wheels, since the only material that can be used to mechanically cut a diamond is another diamond.

Even so, the diamond powder used on the wheels is often no match for black diamonds.

Polnauer said that black diamonds are heavily included and contain hard nodes that eat away at the polishing powder, forcing the cutters to replenish the powder more often than when polishing other types of diamonds.

Polnauer explained in a column titled “The 18 Most Asked Questions About Black Diamonds,” that natural black diamonds are somewhat different from most other diamonds in that they are entirely opaque.

“These stones are incredibly precious, absolutely beautiful and considered quite valuable,” he wrote. “Still, even with all the hype of black diamonds, these stones are more affordable than most other natural fancy colored diamonds.”

Carbonado diamonds are found in only two places on earth — Brazil and the Central African Republic. (During the Earth’s history, the eastern coast of Brazil may have been connected geographically to the western coast of Africa before breaking apart due to continental drift).

The polished diamond shown, above, is the 555.55-carat black carbonado diamond previously known as “The Enigma.” The 55-facet gem was renamed the Hex.com Diamond after Richard Heart, the founder of cryptocurrency company Hex, submitted the winning bid of $4.29 million at a Sotheby's online auction in February of 2022. The transaction was completed in cryptocurrency.

In 2006, The Enigma officially entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the “Largest Cut Fancy Black Diamond.”

Credits: Enigma image via Instagram / Sothebysjewels. Carbonaro rough diamonds image by James St. John, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Here's a fun quiz. What do this beautiful sunstone from the Smithsonian National Gem Collection and Bon Ami's original formula cleanser have in common?

The answer is feldspar.

Sunstone — along with moonstone, amazonite and labradorite — are the members of the feldspar family most familiar to the jewelry-buying public. The mineral in its common form makes up about 60% of the Earth's crust, but on rare occasions the mineral presents crystals that shimmer like the rainbow on a soap bubble.

Sunstones exhibit a reddish to golden "schiller," resulting from light reflecting off numerous tiny copper or hematite (iron oxide) flakes scattered within the stones. The golden sheen flashing off of the Tanzania-sourced 17.91-carat sunstone, above, is due to the presence of hematite platelet inclusions.

More often than not, however, common feldspar has been considered a worthless byproduct of pegmatite mining. Pegmatite consists primarily of the minerals quartz, mica and feldspar. At a mining site in Connecticut during the 1820s miners diligently captured the quartz and mica and discarded the feldspar. And that's the way it was for the next 60 years.

But then in 1885, J.T. Robertson noticed that the shovels used by the miners to separate the feldspar from the other materials were always so bright and shiny. Robertson realized that the relatively soft feldspar (6.0 on the Mohs scale) was doing a great job of polishing the shovels and could be mixed with soap to produce a non-abrasive cleanser. By 1886, Robertson would be harvesting the feldspar "waste" at the quarry to produce Bon Ami soap cleaners, which were billed as the best way to clean windows, floors, oilcloth, woodwork, tin, brass, copper, nickel and glassware.

The product was a runaway hit, as it replaced the harsher, quartz-based scouring products on the market at the time. The Husband Quarry in South Glastonbury, CT, became the primary source of feldspar for the Bon Ami Company.

The company introduced the logo of a newly hatched chick and the slogan, “Hasn’t Scratched Yet!” The phrase, which is one of the US's oldest registered trademarks, referred to the fact that baby chicks live off the nutrients of its egg for three days before having to scratch the ground for food.

On its website, Bon Ami noted that today’s city dwellers no longer make this barnyard connection between non-scratching Bon Ami and non-scratching chicks, but the chick remains a popular mascot.

"We wanted to show that, despite our mineral ingredients and powdered form, Bon Ami is still a gentle cleaner and won’t scratch countertops or fine hard surfaces," the company stated.

Despite aggressive competition from post-WWII products, such as Zud, Ajax and Comet, Bon Ami has remained true to its roots.

"Over the years, there has been pressure for Bon Ami to adapt to the marketplace with new additives and artificial fragrances to compete with mainstream cleaning products," the company wrote. "When more and more chemical cleaning products were introduced in the 1970s, Bon Ami began receiving letters from consumers who thanked us for NOT adding chlorine bleach, perfume and dye."

Today, consumers are very sensitive about keeping harsh chemical cleaning products out of their homes, and Bon Ami is making a comeback by promoting itself as an environmentally friendly, "green" product — thanks to feldspar.

Credits: Sunstone photo by Greg Polley / Smithsonian. Bon Ami product shot and 1909 print ad via bonami.com.

Here's the story behind how one of the world's most accomplished female guitarists earned a Super Bowl LVI championship ring.

Los Angeles born guitarist Nita Strauss has become a force to be reckoned with in the music world, dazzling audiences across six continents. She was Alice Cooper’s touring guitarist from 2014 to 2022 and is currently on tour with Demi Lovato.

She's also a wildly dedicated Los Angeles Rams super fan whose "shreddy guitar playing" prior to the team's home games at SoFi Stadium has been credited with juicing the crowd and supporting the Rams epic run to the Super Bowl LVI championship in February 2022.

In an 800-word piece on ESPN.com, staff writer Michael Rothstein recounted the rocker's Herculean efforts to honor her tour commitments while supporting her favorite team. It was not unusual for her to play a Saturday evening concert, hop a crack-of-dawn Sunday flight to Los Angeles, take an Uber straight to the stadium, perform at the game, grab an Uber back to the airport and catch a red eye to the next stop of the tour.

For her over-the-top devotion to the team, Strauss was honored with an official Super Bowl ring, the same one earned by the players, coaches and staff.

On her Instagram page, Strauss wrote, "And ring or no ring, it was worth every early morning sprint through the airport to be a small part of bringing the energy to SoFi and watching the team bring the championship home."

She said the ring is "pretty damn awesome" and her "new favorite piece of hardware."

Strauss recalled being on tour when she received an unexpected text from Sarah Schuler, the Rams' senior director of game presentation and brand experience.

Schuler's one-line question was, "What's your ring size."

Strauss has been the in-house guitarist for Rams games since the team moved to the $5 billion SoFi Stadium in 2020. She was there when the Rams played in front of no fans during the pandemic, and she enjoyed packed houses last season — all while wearing her No. 86 Rams jersey, a nod to her birth year and her dad's uniform number when he played football.

Strauss put her accomplishments into perspective with this comment on her Instagram page: "You have these goals and dreams and aspirations in your life. And then sometimes, as your career goes on, you’re fortunate enough to achieve things that weren’t even a part of those aspirations, because they didn’t even exist before."

The guitarist has been touring internationally with Lovato and hasn't been able to whip up the crowds at the Rams' home games this season — so far.

On Instagram, she wrote, "Can’t wait to be back home in the #RamsHouse in a few short weeks!!!"

She'll make her return to SoFi on November 13.

Just for the record, the Super Bowl LVI rings presented to the Los Angeles Rams’ players, coaches, staff and Strauss set a record for the highest diamond carat weight in the history of NFL championship rings. Each ring pops with 20 carats of white diamonds, along with custom-cut blue and yellow sapphires set in white and yellow gold.

Images via Instagram / hurricanenita.

A new study published in the Journal of Family Psychology takes a deep dive into the dynamics of rejected marriage proposals and concludes that most failed proposals violate the "proposal script."

Lead author Lisa Hoplock told therapytips.org that the typical Western proposal involves kneeling, offering a ring and asking some variant of "Will you marry me?" It's part of a "life script theory," where people within a culture have shared ideas about the timing and order of big life events.

When a potential suitor fails to stay within the guardrails of what society believes is acceptable, the likelihood of a rejection skyrockets.

As a graduate student at the University of Victoria in Canada, Hoplock analyzed 374 first-person written accounts of accepted and rejected marriage proposals between men and women that were sampled from online forums.

She learned that rejected proposals often came earlier in the relationship, typically prior to the discussion of the topic of marriage by the couple.

"My research shows that some details [of a proposal] can be welcome surprises, but the timing of the proposal in a relationship should not be surprising," Hoplock told therapytips.org. "That is, couples should be on the same page about when they want to get married.“

Hoplock explained the essential role played by the engagement ring in the proposal process.

"We also learned that accepted proposals were more likely to have a ring than rejected proposals," Hoplock noted. "The engagement ring is part of the proposal script. It signifies commitment and readiness for marriage, and was noticed when missing."

Another path to rejection occurred when men popped the question to "save" an unstable or abusive relationship that was otherwise headed toward dissolution.

In the few instances where women proposed in the study, an unusually high proportion were unsuccessful. Once again, the life script theory helps explain the results.

“According to the Western script, men propose to women,” Hoplock said.

One man wrote that he rejected the proposal because he wanted to be the one to propose.

"So, while this element of the script might be slowly changing," Hoplock told therapytips.org, "it is still currently present in relationships between men and women."

Hoplock wrote that audiences played an important role in many proposals. Rejected proposals were more likely to occur under the pressure of public scrutiny. Hoplock said that bystanders encouraged couples to follow the "proposal script" and sometimes became hostile when the woman said "no."

Confusion and anger were the two most common emotions experienced by rejected suitors. She also reported that 30% of relationships survived, despite the rejected proposal.

Hoplock offered the readers of therapytips.org some simple advice on how to up the odds of a successful marriage proposal: Talk in advance about marriage and proposal preferences, and if in doubt, propose in private with a ring.

Credit: Image by Bigstockphoto.com.

The reimagined “Incomparable Diamond," now sporting a classic pear shape and slimmed down to 303.10 carats to reveal a deeper color, brighter hue and improved profile, will be introduced as "The Golden Canary" when it hits the auction block at Sotheby's Magnificent Jewels event in New York on December 7.

In a bold move, the auction house is offering the famous diamond without reserve. Experts believe the massive stone — one of the largest polished diamonds in the world and the largest internally flawless diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America — will sell for $15 million or more.

The original 407-carat, shield-shaped, step-cut Incomparable Diamond had been cut from an 890-carat rough gem discovered by a young girl in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the early 1980s. She reportedly scooped up the stone from a pile of rubble collected from an old mine dump. The diamond had been overlooked because it was mixed in with the bulky rubble thought to be too large to contain any diamonds.

The girl gave the stone to her uncle, who then sold it to local diamond dealers. Given its enormous size, cutters originally intended to shoot for a record-breaking finished stone that would outweigh the Cullinan I (530.20 carats). But as the project progressed, the cutters decided to forego the record. The final size was reduced to 407 carats in order to earn a flawless grade. The original rough diamond also yielded 14 satellite finished gems ranging in size from 1.33 carats to 15.66 carats.

The fancy, deep brownish-yellow Incomparable Diamond became an instant sensation. The gem has attracted crowds at famous museums around the world, including a six-week stint at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, in 1988.

Sotheby's noted that vastly improved computer modeling and cutting technology contributed to the decision to trim the gem by more than 100 carats. The goal was to maximize its depth of color, brighten its hue and improve its shape.

The GIA described the stone in its monograph: “The re-cut of the Incomparable to the current 303.10 carat pear modified brilliant is to look at the diamond as new; a re-creation bringing to bear the advances in technology, computer modeling and visual evaluation available today. Everything from the orientation of the stone, to its shape and cutting style, has been considered.”

"Steeped in history, The Golden Canary is one of the most exquisite diamonds to ever be discovered, not only for its sheer size and intensity in color, but for its stunning beauty that is sure to captivate collectors around the world," noted Quig Bruning, Sotheby’s Head of Jewelry for the Americas. "Sotheby’s is privileged to help write the next chapter for this incomparable, reborn gem.”

The Golden Canary is embarking on a worldwide tour that will include appearances in Dubai, Taipei, Geneva, Hong Kong before returning to New York for the auction.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Sotheby's.

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you fun songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, Malcolm Kelly and Tony Oller (better known as MKTO) perform “Classic,” a 2013 feel-good anthem that pays tribute to "old school chic."

In the song, the duo serenades a girl who is way out of their league. Her style is reminiscent of a bygone era — a time when Hollywood starlets lit up the silver screen.

The opening line sets the scene: “Ooh girl you’re shining / Like a 5th Avenue diamond.”

Oller told MTV News that the song is about natural beauty. As the lyrics affirm, in a "world gone plastic" this girl is "classic."

The pop/hip-hop duo’s “Classic” charted in 16 countries, including a #14 position on the US Billboard Top 100 chart. It was also nominated for “Catchiest New Song” at the 2014 Radio Disney Music Awards.

Both accomplished child actors, Kelly and Oller met as teenagers in 2010 on the set of the Nickelodeon series Gigantic and decided to form a band. Their YouTube covers caught the attention of bigwigs at Columbia records and MKTO scored a record deal.

While MKTO clearly stands for the combined initials of Malcolm Kelly and Tony Oller, the artists insisted that their group name meant much more. Oller told IvoryMusic.org, “It also stands for what our album kind of is: Misfit Kids and Total Outcasts – just like the kids we were in high school.”

Established in 2010, MKTO had a successful run until March of 2017, when Oller posted news via social media that the band had broken up. Fans rejoiced when the pair announced a reconciliation in June of 2018. Then, a little more than three years later, Oller reported that he and Kelly had parted ways.

Please check out the video of MKTO performing “Classic.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along…

“Classic”
Written by Lindy Robbins, Andrew Maxwell Goldstein, Emanuel Kiriakou and Evan Bogart. Performed by MKTO.

Hey! Where’s the drum?

Ooh girl you’re shining
Like a 5th Avenue diamond
And they don’t make you like they used to
You’re never going out of style

Ooh pretty baby
This world might have gone crazy
The way you saved me,
Who could blame me
When I just wanna make you smile

I wanna thrill you like Michael
I wanna kiss you like Prince
Let’s get it on like Marvin Gaye
Like Hathaway write a song for you like this

You’re over my head
I’m out of my mind
Thinking I was born in the wrong time
One of a kind, living in a world gone plastic
Baby you’re so classic
Baby you’re so classic
Baby you,
Baby you’re so classic

Four dozen of roses
Anything for you to notice
All the way to serenade you
Doing it Sinatra style

Ima pick you up in a Cadillac
Like a gentleman bringin’ glamor back
Keep it real to real in the way I feel
I could walk you down the aisle

I wanna thrill you like Michael
I wanna kiss you like Prince
Let’s get it on like Marvin Gaye
Like Hathaway write a song for you like this

You’re over my head
I’m out of my mind
Thinking I was born in the wrong time
Let’s start the rewind, everything is so throwback age (I kinda like it like it)
Out of my league
Old school chic
Like a movie star
From the silver screen
One of a kind living in a world gone plastic
Baby you’re so classic
Baby you’re so classic
Baby you’re so classic

Baby you’re class and baby you’re sick
I never met a girl like you ever til we met
A star in the 40’s, centerfold in the 50’s
Got me tripping out like the sixties
Hippies Queen of the discotheque
A 70’s dream and an 80’s best
Hepburn, Beyoncé, Marilyn Manson
Girl you’re timeless, just so classic

You’re over my head I’m out of my mind
Thinking I was born in the wrong time
Let’s start the rewind, everything is so throwback age (I kinda like it like it)
Out of my league
Old school chic
Like a movie star
From the silver screen
You’re one of a kind living in a world gone plastic
Baby you’re so classic
Baby you’re so classic
Baby you’re so classic

Credit: Screen capture via Youtube.com / MKTO Band.

A first-of-its-kind secret panel slides open to reveal a case of Larry O'Brien Trophies in the 2022 edition of the Golden State Warriors' NBA Championship rings. Each bespoke ring is adorned with 16 carats of yellow and white diamonds (mostly yellow) and features the precise number of Larry O'Brien Trophies won by each player during their time with the Warriors.

Four trophies are hidden in the rings of veteran Warriors Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala. Warriors assistant general manager Kirk Lacob, who spearheaded the design process, told ESPN that the individualized custom feature came from a desire to honor the four core players.

Designed by Jason of Beverly Hills, the rings were presented to the players, coaches and front-office members during a special celebration prior to the team's Tuesday home opener against the Los Angeles Lakers.

As with most championship rings, the design is packed with symbols that tell the story of the team's memorable journey through the playoffs, which culminated in a 103-90 victory over the Boston Celtics in Game 6 of the 2022 NBA Finals at TD Garden in Boston. One symbol, for instance, is a subtle nod to their opponent's home court. Engraved behind the trophies on the ring's shank is the pattern of Boston's legendary parquet floor where the Warriors raised their trophy.

The ring's 16 carats of diamonds represents the Warriors' 16 wins during the 2022 NBA playoffs. The 7 carats of yellow cushion-cut diamonds rimming the top of the ring symbolizes the franchise's seven championships, and the 43 white baguette diamonds used in the Bay Bridge design celebrate Curry's 43-point showing in Game 4 of the 2022 NBA Finals.

The .91 carats of white diamonds on the inner bezel honors the team's 91% home winning percentage during the postseason.

Designer Jason Arasheben also incorporated into the ring design key architectural features of Chase Center, the Warriors’ home arena. By twisting an architectural element just below the white diamond bezel, a slice of the ring top slides open to reveal a secret compartment that houses from one to four championship trophies.

On one side of the ring is the player's name in black enamel, along with the series results of the four playoff rounds, as well as seven Larry O'Brien Trophies representing the franchise's NBA championships.

The other side of the ring features the Warriors' 2022 World Champions banner along with the NBA logo and the team's 2022 mantra, "Just Us."

Arasheben told ESPN.com that this is the first championship ring that uses primarily yellow diamonds. The designer said that supply-chain issues earlier this year made it additionally challenging to source the number of rare yellow diamonds required for 65 rings.

The yellow diamonds are a nod to one of the team's primary jersey colors, as well as the slogan, "Gold Blooded," which the franchise introduced just ahead of the playoffs.

The designer had a five-week window to complete the order. He reported that each ring took 40 to 50 hours to complete and required seven specialists.

Credits: Images courtesy of Jason of Beverly Hills.