The Top Drawer

In just eight days, the largest diamond to be seen in any worldwide auction will be offered by Cristie’s “Jewels: The Hong Kong Sale“. It is expected to sell for over $6,000,000. It was cut from a 460 carat rough to create the 101.27 carat stone, was given an F color rating by GIA, and is internally flawless.

It is a telling sign that the gem is being sold in the region where economic growth is moving at a massive pace. “Only 3 colorless diamonds of over 100 carats have ever appeared at auction, all sold in Geneva.” says Francois Curiel, Christie’s Chairman of Jewelry. The May 28 auction will sell 345 lots and is expected to achieve in bring revenue of $56 million.

In 1993, a National Jeweler’s study discovered that over forty percent of consumers planned to buy a diamond that was at least one carat.  A year later, a large study sponsored by Conde Naste showed the average cost of a wedding ring was $3,576, amounting to sixteen percent of what an average couple spent on their wedding.  More recently, DeBeers’ found that four of five brides are given diamond engagement rings.

The diamond engagement ring finds its origins with the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy in 1477. In modern time, It was unusual to find diamond rings prior to 1870.  From that point on, and initially because of large discoveries in South African mines, diamond jewels became increasingly popular until the Great Depression caused a huge drop in the numbers of marriages.  DeBeers was the driving force in making diamonds hugely popular, and their success landed just after the end of World War II.  Their moto, “A Diamond Is Forever” is still a mantra for why diamonds are such an important part of a marriage as we move beyond 2008.

The spring style magazines covering fashion talked a lot about necklaces, using words like “big, bold, bright, and daring” to highlight the most important trends. Necklaces are statement pieces this spring and going into the summer. There were bold necklaces shown in the Elle’s photo coverage of Fashion week. Vogue also pointed out that the cost of jewelry now looks very attractive compared to the “skyrocketing” prices of clothing. High end jewelry is selling at a brisk pace.

Mark Aldenderfer with the University of Arizona, Tucson made an astonishing discovery at an archaeological site in 2004.  Just this month he went public with information about his find– the oldest gold artifact ever unearthed in the Americas.  The necklace is about 4000 years old, and was found in Jiskairumoko, Peru, the site of ancient hunter/gatherer groups.

The find shows that jewelry was used to differentiate wealth and prestige prior to the development of complex societies in South America.  It is commonly thought that only sedentary societies built up more material wealth than they can consume.  The people living in this area were always passing through, not settling.

The gold cylinders on the necklace weigh 5.2 grams and measure from 0.4 to 1.1 inches. They are mixed with 11 turquoise colored beads. The piece was made by using gold nuggets pounded by mortar. Flattened sheets were rolled around a tube.

The word around New York is that gold is now truly a precious metal in every sense of the word. The World Gold Council statistics show that gold jewelry demand increased by 22% in 2007 as compared to 1996, and that was before the recent jump in costs for gold bullion.

If prices for gold fall back to the old reality, Firenze Jewels and other jewelers expect it will still be an attractive accessory. Many people want the prestige of wearing beautifully crafted gold items that are out of reach to many. New technical processes allow gold to be designed in ways not imagined years ago. Stones that were previously not used along side gold such as peridot are now paired. Sterling and platinum were what the fashion conscious jumped on, but with the new extravagant price of gold, it will be more attractive to all.

NASA wouldn’t have to mine a large portion of Eros—or another asteroid like it– to pay for the next 5 decades of its programs, but it also couldn’t come up with the funds to do so. And carrying out a task of this sort would be a as groundbreaking (pun intended) and newsworthy as any event in the annals of both space-crafting and mining.

Could investment from any number of sources, like the US government teaming up with its 10 most friendly allies, allow for robotic mining of a blasted space rock? It would take many, many years to prepare and would destroy world markets for minerals such as gold as they are flooded by gold from space; but yes it is quite possible. With a massive inventory of jewelry in every size and shape, Firenze Jewels doesn’t like the idea of such an expedition much was it to happen tomorrow. Nor, we suspect, would those of you that own high valued gold or platinum jewelry. So what do you think, is space the place for us to expand our search for precious stones, as well minerals like aluminum?

The Asteroid Eros was closely examined in 1999 by the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft. Few Asteroids have been closely examined, and it is believed that Eros may not be unusual in the minerals it contains. There are 1000s of asteroids circling earth. Weighing in at about 20,000 million tons of aluminum and with almost the same amount of gold and platinum, one has to wonder why NASA hasn’t launched a mission to capture the banana shaped asteroid, tethered it to the international space station, and started one of the largest mining projects in the history of the world— in space.

In fact, the amount of precious stone in this not particularly large Asteroid is greater than what could be mined from the entire upper crust of our planet. Twenty to 200 thousand megatons of explosives would be needed to extract substantial amounts of precious minerals. Such a project would more realistically be done by mining on the rock itself by a spacecraft using solar energy and robots.