Jewelry Diamonds Information

Something strange happened this week in Amazon.com's apparel section.

For a day or two, a black T-shirt featuring an image of three wolves baying at a full moon claimed the top slot at the online store's clothing bestseller list,, beating out the usual, unremarkable mix of Levi's 505 regular-fit jeans, Crocs clogs and Adidas running shoes.

Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, Available in Various Sizes

And really, why wouldn't you buy the shirt, which is priced from $7.65 to $17.93, depending on your size? Just read the long and growing list of customer testimonials promising earth-shattering experiences or psychedelic vision quests upon purchase.

"I bought this shirt and instantly old girlfriends started calling me again," wrote one reviewer."My doctor says the cancer has gone into remission," wrote another. "

Thanks for changing my life!"The shirt's page at Amazon.com had quietly existed for years without much comment, but after a snarky link from CollegeHumor.com, the "Three Wolf Moon" shirt suddenly sprouted hundreds of five-star ratings.

Reviewers have dreamed up epics about its powers, weaving fantasies involving everything from the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland to the pop group Duran Duran.

As the joke caught on and got passed around the Web, Photoshopped spoofs of the shirt started appearing online -- featuring corgi puppies, spiders or haddock instead of the now-famous wolves.

CollegeHumor.com, a comedy site started in 1999 by a couple of high school friends who grew up together in Timonium, Md., also claimed victory this week for rigging an online poll run by the state of Nebraska to select a new license-plate design.

The site urged its readers to vote for what it deemed the most boring design available to Nebraska drivers. That gray-and-white plate won.Officials in Nebraska said they monitored Web traffic to screen out visitors coming directly from the humor site, but CollegeHumor.com was still, credibly, claiming the joke a success this week.

"Together we pranked the entire automobile-owning population of Nebraska," wrote a CollegeHumor.com editor, in a Wednesday posting. "Congratulations."

This type of online rabble-rousing appears to be catching on more than ever over the past year, said Tim Hwang, the organizer of ROFLCon, a convention dedicated to celebrating Internet memes.

After all, another Web-based prank crossed over into the real world just last month when a 21-year-old college student, known by the online moniker "m00t," sailed to the top of Time's "most influential person" list in an online poll, beating out the likes of President Obama and Oprah Winfrey.

Gathering nearly 17 million votes, the world's "most influential" person is the founder of another jokey Web culture site, 4chan.org, whose proprietor is known offline by the name Christopher Poole. If you don't get why the shirt, and its reviews, are so funny, don't worry.

CollegeHumor.com co-founder Josh Abramson said it's a case where the shirt is so uncool that it's cool."A lot of things that become popular on the Web are based around just being ironic and being an inside joke," Abramson said.

"This resonates with a geeky, hip crowd that is very Web-savvy. When something resonates with that circle, crazy things can happen."Abramson said his team had considered licensing the wolf shirt for sale.

CollegeHumor.com, which had 7 million unique Web visitors last month, also has an online store that sells T-shirts with ironic catchphrases and designs, called BustedTees.com. But it appears that the site may have been a bit slow to catch on to its own meme.

"We're kicking ourselves that we didn't," he said.The New Hampshire company that makes the "Three Wolf Moon" shirt said that it doesn't generally mind being the butt of this joke."You have to be able to laugh at yourself," said Michael McGloin, a partner and art director at the Mountain, who added that he finds some of the reviews to be "freaking hilarious."

The company certainly doesn't mind the shirt's recent uptick in sales: "Three Wolf Moon" is sold out, and the Mountain has started printing up a fresh batch.

It seems that the wolf theme was growing in popularity even before the Internet hipsters descended, McGloin said."Wolf shirts are super hot right now," he said. "It's the year of the wolf, I guess."

Click now to Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, Available in Various Sizes

By Mike Musgrove, Washington Post Staff Writer

Labels: ironic tshirt, jewelry diamonds, the mountain, three wolf moon, tshirt, wolf moon, wolf shirt, wolf t-shirt

GENEVA (Reuters) – A flawless vivid blue diamond weighing 7.03 carats sold Tuesday for a record 10.5 million Swiss francs ($9.49 million), the highest price paid per carat for any gemstone at auction, Sotheby's said.

The rectangular-shaped blue stone, the rarest to enter the international market this year, went to an anonymous buyer bidding by telephone after hectic bidding see-sawed between two callers for 15 minutes.

It was the centrepiece of its semi-annual sale in Geneva, conducted by David Bennett, chairman of Sotheby's jewelry department in Europe and the Middle East, who said the results showed the market's resilience despite the economic downturn.

"This is already a new world record price for a fancy vivid blue diamond and a new world record per carat for any gemstone (at auction)," Bennett told reporters.

"It is fantastic in this market and shows that these rare things are very much in demand," he said.

The final price includes a commission paid by the buyer to the auction house. The stone sets a record price per carat for any gemstone sold at auction of $1,349,752, Sotheby's said.

The previous record price for a fancy vivid blue diamond was $7.9 million, including commission, for a stone weighing 6.04 carats at sale in Hong Kong in October 2007, also by Sotheby's.

The new owner will have the right to name the stone, which is mounted in a platinum ring. The pre-sale catalog estimate was 6.8 million to 10 million francs, excluding commission. The hammer price excluding commission was 9.3 million francs.

It was put up for sale by London-listed Petra Diamonds, which extracted it last year from the historic Cullinan mine in South Africa, the world's most regular supplier of blue diamonds of size and quality. Blue are the rarest of the diamond family after reds.

"To have a stone mined last year and cut the early part of this year so it is absolutely virgin coming straight from the mine has never happened before," Bennett said. "This is one of the extremely rare substances in our universe."

The sale fetched a total of 39.5 million swiss francs ($35.7 million) for 266 lots which found new owners, while another 80 pieces were stranded on the block.

"In this general economic environment to see $35 million worth sold in a session shows a lot about the resilience of fine jewels no matter what the climate," Bennett said.

Fresh stones to the market, including coloured diamonds, fetched good prices, the Briton said.

By Stephanie Nebehay

Labels: blue diamond, David Bennett, jewelry diamonds, sotheby's

There's something so exciting about these incredibly large and perfect stones. Sometimes they have well-documented histories and we know where they came from and who owned them and when. But others have a past that's not as well-known, and that only adds to the romance and mystique surrounding them.

One such diamond is called the Portuguese Diamond and is a 127-carat, cushion-cut diamond, shaped in an octagonal emerald shape. It's nearly flawless. While it's called the Portuguese Diamond, with a story that it was mined in Brazil and became part of the Portuguese Crown Jewels, there's really no true documentation that says definitively that that’s where the diamond was mined. Must of the diamond's history is pure legend and conjecture. One can only imagine who wore this incredible stone!

One part of the diamond's history that is well-documented is that in February 1928 Peggy Hopkins Joyce traded a $350,000 pearl necklace for the diamond and $23,000 in cash. According to New York newspaper accounts, it was mounted on a diamond-studded platinum choker to be worn close around the throat (probably the same necklace described above).

There’s something so exciting about these incredibly large and perfect stones. Sometimes they have well-documented histories and we know where they came from and who owned them and when. But others have a past that's not as well-known, and that only adds to the romance and mystique surrounding them.

Miss Joyce performed in the Ziegfeld Follies, and had six husbands, at least five of whom were wealthy. She was said to be almost as fond of jewels as of men. Sometime prior to 1946 Miss Joyce placed the diamond on consignment to the group of jewelers mentioned above, in an unsuccessful attempt to sell it.

Harry Winston acquired the Portuguese Diamond from Miss Joyce in 1951, and for the next several years it traveled the country as part of his "Court of Jewels" exhibition. In 1957, Winston sold the diamond to an international industrialist, who then traded it back in 1962. In 1963, the Smithsonian acquired the Portuguese Diamond from Mr. Winston in exchange for 2,400 carats of small diamonds.

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Labels: diamond, jewelry, jewelry diamonds, portuguese