Despite some signs of a softening economy, US consumers are still in a spending mood as we hurtle toward the holiday season, according to the Mastercard SpendingPulse™. The credit card company's annual holiday forecast is predicting that US retail sales will increase 7.1% year over year, excluding automotive sales. That's very good news, considering last […]
The finest black opals come from Lightning Ridge, an Aussie mining area that has been yielding top-quality opals since 1903 — about the same time Louis Comfort Tiffany took his first stab at designing fine jewelry at the age of 54. Tiffany, whose father was Charles Lewis Tiffany, the founder of the famous jewelry company, […]
The 11.15-carat Williamson Pink Star lived up to its pre-sale hype at Sotheby's Hong Kong on Friday when — after a tense, 20-minute bidding war — the second-largest internally flawless, fancy vivid pink diamond ever to appear at auction sold for the staggering price of $57.7 million. That was more than 2.5 times the auction […]
Welcome to Music Friday when we often bring you classic songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, the incomparable Carole King gets the ring in her classic 1964 hit, “Oh No Not My Baby.” King assumes the role of a young woman, whose trust is unwavering despite signs that […]
Lucapa Diamond Company celebrated another milestone when it unveiled a 113-carat, gem-quality, white, Type IIa diamond from its flagship Lulo site in Angola. It was the fifth 100-plus-carat diamond recovered in 2022 and the 30th 100-plus-carat stone unearthed since the site was opened in 2015. The Lulo mining area, which comprises 1,100 square miles along […]
Scientists at Washington State University (WSU) were stunned when platinum outperformed gold in a test to determine how much pressure they could take. Prior to the study, the scientists at WSU's Institute for Shock Physics speculated that gold would be the victor, but the final results weren't even close. Platinum easily held its atomic structure […]
There’s an ancient Egyptian legend that describes how tourmalines got their amazing colors, and it goes something like this... On their long voyage up to the surface from the center of the Earth, tourmalines passed through a rainbow — and by doing so, assumed all of its colors. The name “tourmaline” is derived from the […]
Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you sensational songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the lyrics or title. Today, Jason Derulo dreams about proposing with "the perfect diamond ring" in his 2010 tune, "What If." Derulo explained to the BBC that the song is about meeting someone for the first time and […]
A super lucky, 18.18-carat, pear-shaped, fancy vivid pink diamond is expected to fetch between $25 million and $35 million when it hits the auction block at Christie's Magnificent Jewels sale in Geneva on November 8. Dubbed "The Fortune Pink," the bubblegum-colored stone is being billed as the largest pear-shaped, fancy vivid pink diamond offered for […]
With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, much has been written about the British Crown Jewels and the massive diamonds at the center of the Sovereign’s Sceptre and the Imperial State Crown. Both diamonds were expertly cut from the 3,106-carat Cullinan — the world’s largest rough diamond — by Joseph Asscher of the Amsterdam-based Asscher […]