Diamonds Bought, Robbed, Shown, and Monitored

This week in jewelry news…

Diamond Museum

Capetown-based jewelry mogul Yair Shimansky, with a $5B buyout of the last 40% controlling stake of De Beers, is opening a diamond museum in the South African capital. To honour South Africa’s extensive diamond history, the museum was launched at the end of last year as a “gift to the city”.

Read more here.

Kimberley Process Revisited

Speaking of Africa’s diamond trade, it seems that string rules enforcing the Kimberley process, designed to limit and control the conflict diamond market, are starting to become dangerously and problematically relaxed. Recently, some diamond trade operations in Zimbabwe have called the process, which has been in effect since 2003, have caused a stir and the backstep is requiring some investigation to keep things ethical amidst a booming diamond market.

Read more about this here.

Chinese Diamond Market

Speaking of a growing diamond trade market, nowhere is this more true at the moment than China. As yet another clue about their growing economic presence, investment in diamonds in China has grown to compete with a precious investment market historically far more associated with gold (in 2012 China will likely be considered the largest buyers of gold in the world, ahead of India). As more Western concepts of love and commitment carry into China, so will diamond sales naturally follow.

Read more here.

Obvious Robbery

In a bit of a silly and sad story, a woman has $150,000 in jewelry stolen from her after a flight. Her bag was weighted by the jewellery, which they told her they couldn’t let her take on the plane. Then they let her on, but took custody of the bag, after she explained why she wanted it with her. Maybe not the smartest move. In this declaration, a seed was likely planted in someone’s sneaky mind, and the crime was committed, with no guilty parties yet arrested.

Don’t tell people when you have a bag full of jewelry. Learn more about how this can go badly for you here.

Hope Valentine’s Day was fun!