Jewellery News

In New Zealand, a 29-year old man got rejected by the woman he wanted to marry and he’s heartbroken. So now, he wants to give away the engagement ring he bought her and he’s doing it in a unique way – by organising a treasure hunt in Wellington, NZ with the clues on Twitter. What a great example of a game that’s been around for ages and new age technology coming together. Add the emotional appeal of a diamond engagement ring and a broken heart to that and it has all the elements to make it a big story.

The ring must cost around £2000 and if you aren’t in or around Wellington, you wouldn’t obviously be participating. However, with Twitter the way it is, we’re sure there will be many watching from around the world – virtually – and cheering the participants on.

Spotted with a huge rock on her finger one day and gone the next, is Britney engaged or not is the question. The day she wasn’t wearing her ring, she was spotted with her boyfriend Jason who trailed behind her as she shopped. That’s quite a change for Britney Spears anyway – considering the tough times she had to go through. She’s gone brunette right now, and she loves it. We’ll miss that blonde look though!

That engagement ring on her finger is huge and sparkles like nothing else. The thing is, it was almost as though she wanted to show everyone that she had an engagement ring on. She even kept waving her hands around.

In Victoria, Australia, a 73 year old lady took her rings off to wash her hands and forgot them there. Now she is offering a reward to get them back. Her husband says it is because of the sentimental value of the rings that they want it back.

It is actually three rings that have been welded together. It has in it the engagement ring, the wedding ring and a third ring which was what was added on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. So there are so many memories going back so many years in that ring and the couple has sent out a plea to the one who found it to please return it to them.

An expensive diamond ring was lost, returned by an honest employee and the next thing you know, it’s being claimed by someone who the ring did not belong to. The Suffolk County police in the US however, are quite confident that they will bring this false claimant to book and she might just face serious charges for claiming something so expensive that was not hers.

It all began when a well meaning person working at Target saw the ring on a counter and ran after the wrong woman and asked if she had lost a ring. She said she had and he gave her the ring as he had no cause not to believe her. This diamond ring was worth over £11,500 and it was an eternity band made of platinum. And all this while, the actual owner of the ring was looking for it all over the shop. The ring had been given to her by her husband and though it was insured, it was the sentimental value that was all-important to her.

She lost her wedding ring while she was playing volleyball over thirty years ago. She lost her husband three years ago. And suddenly, her old ring surfaces thanks to a metal detector and she was amazed that it looked as gleaming and good as the day she lost it. June for her has been a month of momentous moments – she was married in June, she lost her ring in June, her husband died in June and now she finds her ring in June.

Today she wears the ring on a chain around her neck and she is so happy to have got it back. That wedding ring holds such sentimental memories and the day she got it back was the third anniversary of her husband’s death. For her, that ring seemed to bring a comforting message with it – that her husband was still somewhere close to her.

Isn’t it nice when something you thought you had lost years ago and given up getting back resurfaces? At Ponteland, there’s work going on to redo the old bathrooms and kitchens in one of the buildings there on Callerton Lane. Well, what it turned up were two rings which made two tenants very happy indeed.

One got her wedding ring back – it was found by the workmen under the floorboards. The other got her mother’s eternity ring back – also from under the floorboards. The wonderful thing was how honest the workmen were to return these old rings that they found. The women, as expected, were thrilled to bits to get back these treasures.

In Galveston in the US, a volunteer worker at a church saw something glinting on the pavement, picked it up and found it was a wedding ring with a date inscribed on it. As they were talking, a lady working inside the church heard and she knew exactly whose ring it was.

Two years ago, Doug Guiling had lost his wedding ring while watching a Mardi Gras parade with his wife. They retraced their footsteps and looked high and low but couldn’t find it. They even rented a metal detector hoping that it would pick up the ring but it was of no use. They then went back to Dallas where they were from. Till now, two years later when the ring presented itself to be picked up and returned to its owner. The lady in the church remembered about the lost ring and soon Doug and his family were on their way to Galveston where they headed for the church for him to be reunited with his ring.

It might be a bit tough to envisage but it could well happen. With the major economies not having a great deal of reserves where gold is concerned, if the gold standard which was abandoned in 1971 were to be brought back, the price to gold would rise to phenomenal heights. That might not be a welcome event for any of the economies that matter.

There is one thing however that has continued to trade in hard cash over the years and that is natural coloured diamonds. They have proved to be a great asset accumulation tool with most of the natural coloured diamonds being snapped up not for jewellery but for investment purposes. There are some incredible rare coloured diamonds and there are some which are available for a thousand or more dollars so they are something everyone can afford.

The ring had been on her finger for all of sixty years and then the fact that her fingers were swollen with arthritis meant that she had to have it removed. This rather old lady from Spokane Valley in the Washington area of the USA was suffering from very severe arthritis so one of the hospice workers called in the fire department of the city to get the ring off her finger. Which they did and the wedding ring came off with the help of the fire-fighters’ tool kit which included a ring cutter.

It must have been heartbreaking for the old lady to see her ring come off but the fact that they all took the trouble to get it off her swollen finger was very commendable.

There were two hundred pieces of stolen jewellery that were auctioned recently in the US. The jewellery includes some very expensive pieces of jewellery including diamond rings. Now why is this jewellery being auctioned? Most of these pieces are those that were a result of credit card fraud or from businesses that have had to down their shutters.

Police usually put all in the items that are recovered after they have managed to catch the ones who indulge in credit card fraud. Then there are people as well as businesses that go through a very bad patch financially and have to fold up.

Now most of these pieces of jewellery will go at about 70% of the value of the piece. The items also include designer watches from Raymond Weill, Tag Hueur, Rolex and Piaget. There’s a ring with an almost-9 carat emerald, there’s pearls, a diamond bracelet and of course an incredible solitaire diamond ring which is expected to go for over £30,000.

He has been named as one of the boxing greats. He was wonderful to watch inside the boxing ring and he was flamboyant outside it, He had his well tailored suits, a leopard on a leash and his hands flashed with diamond rings. He was nicknamed ‘Gorilla’ because his arms had such a long reach.

His was a chequered life. He shot into fame from virtual anonymity and then after a few years of lording it in the ring, he dropped back out of sight and was away from the public glare for awhile. Then he went and joined up as a bodyguard cum chauffeur to Mae West. People still remember his wonderful style and the way he never liked to hurt anyone.