Jewellery News

He was in the news four years ago when he was begging and some generous soul dropped a solitaire diamond ring into his bowl. The diamond was set in a white gold band and it was valued at £500. He didn’t even know when the person had dropped it and it was only when he was counting his coins that he realised that there was a diamond ring among them.

The police tried to find out who it was and they did manage to find that a man had gone to a jewellery store close by to sell the ring and when they didn’t buy it, he dropped it into the begging bowl. The police waited a month, just in case the man reported it lost or wanted it back and then the beggar was allowed to keep it.

He gave it to his daughter who still has the ring. Then, in June this year, he was diagnosed with cancer and given three months to live but he stayed alive till Christmas, spent it with his daughter and grandchildren and then died. He was known all over the neighbourhood because he played a tin whistle. He was, according to his daughter, very positive and he would not let even the cancer get him down.

Would they, wouldn’t they, was what people were asking about talent agent Jim Toth and popular actress Reese Witherspoon. Well, come the holidays, they did – get engaged, we mean and Reese has a humungous engagement ring on her finger to flaunt. It’s a diamond ring any woman would die for and here’s Reese really living it up with this one of a kind ring.

The diamond engagement ring has a 6-carat diamond at the centre and it has 62 facets. It is set in a platinum band with a diamond pavé design and it really is stunning. It is among the 1 out of 10 diamonds to qualify to be of the Ashoka standard.

Jim apparently got together with the William Goldberg Diamond Corporation so he could have a diamond ring that would wow Reese. He also made sure that everything was just the way it should be before he proposed. With a ring as unique and rare as this, who wouldn’t say Yes? The Academy Award winning actress did and she now wears his ring.

Prince William’s and Kate Middleton’s engagement caused so much excitement not just here at home but all over the world and it looks like when it comes to their engagement ring, imitation is really the best form of flattery. Let’s take a look at how this sapphire and diamond engagement ring is affecting people and business in China.

The royal engagement ring is worth a lot today, having been valued in 1981 when it was slipped onto Diana’s finger as £28.000. You can imagine how much more it must be worth today. The sapphire is all of 18 carats and it is a perfect oval and encircling it are fourteen round diamonds set in a cluster.

So what does this have to do with faraway China? Well, their largest online mall is offering these look-alike rings at less than a hundred yuan – that’s less than £9 and the cheapest one to be offered on sale is less than £2! Of course, to get over the copyright problems, there are small changes being made like the number of zircons, the shade of the blue stone, etc.

Their wedding was such a hush-hush affair and there was nary a whisper about it – so what did they do – pay for people to keep quiet? In this day and age of instant news, how on earth did they manage to keep it such a great secret? Even state secrets are not sacrosanct anymore. Well, three months later, Jamie was at a Primal Scream concert when he realised that his wedding ring was gone – at least it wasn’t on his finger.

He thinks that he might have taken it off and out it into the pocket of his jeans before he went on-stage to play – on account of it getting caught in the strings you know. Now he’s lost it – and we’ve heard that he was probably smashed as well – and he just doesn’t know how to tell Kate about it. He’s quite sure she will be mad enough to want to kill.

According to sources, Kate is not going to let him off the hook in a hurry – not even the fact that she could probably buy thousands more rings like that will help in her forgetting it or being annoyed at how careless he could be. Add to that the fact that she wasn’t recognised by the doorman when she got to that particular show and you can see why she must be seething.

It was at a recent press conference that it was suddenly apparent that there was a huge big diamond ring on the Australian Prime Minister’s finger. Julia Gillard was right in the middle of a press conference that lasted for about an hour and she made no efforts to try and hide the diamond ring.

What the press and everyone else there wanted to know was whether it was an engagement ring. She laughed it away saying that it was just a ring that she usually wore on her right hand but she had done a lot of writing and anyone who does that will know just how hard it can be with a ring on your finger. That was the excuse she gave anyway. For her, so she claimed, her hand with the ring on began to hurt when there was a bit too much to write.

Julia Gillard has been with Tim Mathieson for a while now and everyone is curious to know if and when she is going to tie the knot with her partner. Little wonder her diamond ring was viewed with so much interest and speculation.

How can someone steal from a 98 year old lady? That’s unfortunately what the world has come to when thieves steal from people who are approaching a hundred. And it’s all planned so well and executed so faultlessly that even the person who is robbed doesn’t realise it till the thief has left.

Here’s what happened at Shermanbury, close to Horsham. A man walked up to this old lady’s house, rang her bell and said he had come to check her water supply. She was a smart lady so she went with him to the kitchen, turned her tap on and stayed with him the whole time he was there. So how did he get away with her purse in which she had kept her rings? Did he have an accomplice?

The rings included an engagement ring which had three diamonds and was set in white gold, a wedding ring made of white gold and an eternity ring also made of white gold. The wedding ring had her name – Lillian – engraved inside it. The police have asked anyone who saw anything suspicious to come talk to them. They have also warned everyone to verify the identity of anyone who knocks or rings the doorbell and also to be especially careful when it came to the older people in the family.

How strange is that – you get a pair of gloves, you put it away and after a year you try them on – and you find a wedding ring inside! That’s what happened to a lady in St. Louis in the USA recently. Imagine putting on a pair of gloves for the first time and finding something like this.

The story began a year ago at Christmas time when she got a present and they were a pair of gloves – red in colour. Now she had another pair that was quite similar so she put the gift away, thinking that she would take them out later when she needed to. And that’s what she did this year. She snipped off the tags and slipped her hands into them and that’s when she realised that there was something inside one of the gloves.

That something was a wedding ring. It was only when she couldn’t get one finger up all the way that she realised there was something there and when she pulled it out, there was the wedding ring. She hopes that she can find the owner because she realises someone must have been devastated a year ago when she found that she had lost her ring. She feels that person must have been doing her Christmas shopping in a hurry and it’s quite likely her wedding ring must have been loose and come off when she tried on the gloves. What a wonderful Christmas or New Year gift it will be to the owner if she can be found!

Finally, the details of Shania Twain’s rock of an engagement ring are out. She was spotted dining out with her fiancé and what the media was most interested in, of course, was the engagement ring on her finger. They were spotted at Serafina’s Fabulous Grill in New York a week ago and soon after that, their engagement was announced.

First, the man. His name is Frederic Thiebaud and he works with Nestle. It also looks like they are very much in love and unlike most Hollywood celebrities, not flashy or flaunting. That’s really what Shania Twain has always wanted – a relationship where she has a man who is faithful and a love that is steady and lasting. Right now, it looks like she couldn’t have made a better choice.

Now for the ring. No, it isn’t flashy but it is classic and it is all of 3 carats. Her fiancé had it specially designed by Lorraine Schwartz and the diamond is emerald cut. Of course, it’s worth a lot – around £65,000. He might work for a chocolate and candy company but when it comes to diamonds, they are definitely more hot than sweet.

Well, you have it there – platinum is the metal of choice for diamond rings in Hollywood. Most of tinsel town’s celebrities are opting for platinum diamond rings for both wedding rings and engagement rings. From Penelope Cruz to Megan Fox to Nicole Ritchie, it’s been platinum and diamonds all the way.

Why platinum? It could be because the white metal goes with every outfit you wear – gold doesn’t. It could also be because platinum tends to show off the stone better and makes it seem more dazzling. Many of them are also wearing eternity diamond and platinum bands.

The thing is, the diamond can be any cut or shape or design – platinum and diamonds are still a hot favourite. So you’ll find pear-shaped ones, the more popular round ones, square-cut ones, pave designs – and they all shine and dazzle in platinum.

What happens when Silvio Berlusconi decides on Christmas presents for the women in his Parliament? He doesn’t think of any ordinary present, oh no! He decides on diamond rings and that is what all the 37 ladies got.

So that makes 37 people less when he tries to think of what presents to buy. In one fell dazzling swoop, he’s rid himself of the pain of wondering what to buy. And we’re thinking that not one of the women was unhappy with her gift. The rings were diamond-encrusted and all his female party members in Parliament got one.

The price of all those rings was well over £37,000 and considering that the Prime Minister survived a scary no-trust motion just a few days ago, maybe this ring was to tell the women that he wanted them to keep supporting him. It made for a very dazzling Christmas however.

There are so many things that are being bought virtually today and this is where the future seems to be. The iPad especially has just increased mobile shopping so much and one finds that people are a lot more willing to buy things online than they were before.

Diamond rings too? That’s the great part – that even something like engagement rings are being ordered through a mobile or an iPad. This festive season is going to see many more shoppers getting gifts for family and friends in front of their computer screens. Last year, these were just 5% of sales but this year it is expected to be much more.

The great thing is, you can do a lot of research on every product before you buy and a lot of people like doing that. On eBay alone, on just one day – December 12th – sales in the US topped £8 million and they are looking at over £1 billion this year. And it’s across the board – from small items to the really big. Last month, there were 4 Ferraris sold through mobiles.