Diamonds & Engagement Rings News

Samantha Ronson has decided to take her relationship to the next level by surprising her assistant/roommate/rough sex partner, Lindsay Lohan on her twenty second birthday with a Cartier diamond ring worth $22,000. Ronson got the ring for Lindsay while the inseparable couple was shopping over the weekend. Of course, Lindsay quickly slipped the ring on to the one finger that engagement and wedding rings are worn.

This is not the first time that the couple has expressed their love through ring exchanging. The first time was back in March of this year when both roommates exchanged matching rings with each other’s initials on them, similar to girls in grade-school who would trade toys with their BFF’s trying to instill some sort of deal between themselves that their friendship will last forever with the memory of a piece of plastic.

About a month later, the rings were switched so that Lindsay had the ring with her initials and Sam had the ring with the initials, “SR.” While Lindsay had already given up on the significance of the ring, Samantha had remained devoted by wearing her neon-colored memory up until this past weekend, when the two went shopping, once again.

Their relationship definitely continued to raise suspicions as Lohan receives a new ring to flaunt about. A source had confirmed that it is not an engagement ring, just a symbol of their commitment to each other. The source explains that Lindsay is very much ecstatic and together , they are very content.

Pictures of the couple surely give the feeling that they are a bit more than just “content,” as they were intimately and openly caught kissing on P. Diddy’s yacht , recently. Lindsay had pretty much made it clear by saying, “I just want to live a happy, healthy year, continue on the path that I have been on and be with the person that I care about, and my family.” 

                                                     

Uma Thurman and her new fiance look as if they don’t want to waste much time, rushing into a huge engagement party preceding their announced engagement just last week.

The couple managed to attract a whole group of celebrity A-listers to the bash.

It was only to be expected of Busson, the multimillionaire financier, to throw a huge engagement party after giving Uma Thurman an enormous ring said to be an eight-carat center stone surrounded by twenty smaller diamonds.

          

Some of the guests at the party included Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, sir Elton John and his partner David Furnish, and supermodel Claudia Schiffer, followed by Liz Hurley, Damien Hirst, Bob Geldof, Jemima Khan and Charlotte Princess of Monaco.

 The grand party took place in a marquee in the garden of Arpad Busson’s house in Kensington, west London.

Busson is an old hand at planning such facinating parties. His children’s charity, Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), hosted a fund raising gala dinner that raised more then US $50 million last month.

The French financier is now expected to throw an even bigger wedding in order to top the engagement ring given to Uma prior to the engagement party.

UBS Swiss bank has been buying diamonds for wealthy American clients and has been smuggling the diamondsin a toothpaste tube, says UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld. Instead of Americans having to buy diamonds from the U.S. and pay federal income taxes, they try and get it easy by importing the diamonds from Switzerland based bank UBS employees.

The IRS was informed to serve a ‘John Doe’ summons on the bank directing UBS to reveal the records of American taxpayers who have a UBS account in Switzerland in order to be hidden from the IRS.

According to the statement that Birkenfeld had given to the court, wealthy U.S. clients created UBS accounts with fake identities and even gave IRS false information writing that its the non-existent identity who is the owner of the offshore account. Birkenfeld’s court statement, the bank had an average of US $20 billion worth of possessions in ‘undeclared’ accounts for American taxpayers. 

The law requirements of U.S. tax payers are to state all financial accounts in foreign countries if the total amount in the account goes beyond US $10,000. Failing to follow this law can result in a fine of up to fifty percent of the total amount in the account, once the violation is discovered.

The JCK Harrison Group consumer jewelry study has recently been asked an interesting question, only to have a very shocking response. “Thinking about fine jewelry, what brand or company that makes and/or sells jewelry comes to mind first?”, was the question that was asked. The very surprising response was Zales as the No. 1 jewelry brand. Next came Kay Jewelers, which tied in with Zales and Tiffany & Co.  in the past.

The study gained 908 responds from people who bought fine jewelry in the past two years. Even after advertising jewelry for a decade, most jewelry buyers still have retail as their first thought, instead of the product by brand.

57% of the responds wrote the names of local independent jewelers, regional chains, websites, or brands, but non were good enough to make the top ten on the list.

Tiffany scored No. 3 in the top ten and Cartier was No. 8. Both companies also have very strong retail mechanism.

A JCK study done in 1999 posed a question on how familiar people are with brands. They had four top answers, which included Tiffany, Cartier, De Beers and Van Cleef & Arpels.

The study resulted in 42% of respondents being “very familiar” with Tiffany, 35.5% very familiar with Cartier and 20.6% with De Beers.

Since the study in 1999 there have been much more jewelry advertising pages in consumer fashion, lifestyle and shelter magazines. Hence, brands like Heart On Fire and Scott Kay were expected to be mentioned in unaided recall. But there were only five top names- Zales, Kay, Tiffany, Jared and De Beers- that remained the same.

Prices have become another issue to the consumer world with Blue Nile and other jewelry websites raising their costs. Such websites happen to have lower prices than jewelry stores, for competition causes. When consumers actually buy from jewelers they expect a valid reason as to why they should pay jewelers more than websites.

The study concluded by saying that jewelry retailers should be pleased to know that retailers still have the upper hand in fine jewelry.   Â

It is very rare to have a gratifying experience when children stick their hands into a toilet.

 Last week, as 10-year-old Cameron Delande from Chatham slipped on a rubber glove and dunked his hand into the toilet bowl to get his tooth brush, he found two diamond rings.

Initially Bill, Cameron’s father, a firefighter admit that no one believed his son, until he saw the rings in his son’s hand. The band was black and the stones were brown.

After taking the rings to get them cleaned, the jewelry appraiser told the family that the four stones on both rings amounted to well over a carat. The appaiser also told Delande that the solitaire might be about 100 years old from the look of its condition.

The discovery of the rings actually shocked Delande who says, “It’s just bizarre… I’ve snaked the toilet so many times. When you have four kids, things get stuck in there, believe me.”

Delande wanted to show his children the rewards of a good deed and so he decided he would try and find the owner of the rings.

Delande began his search right away, calling his real estate agent who sold the house to him on Tangelwood Drive two years ago. The agent told Delande the name of the previous owner: Mary Trainer. He told Delande that Mrs. Trainer worked in Starbucks as well.

                 

Cameron Delande holds one of the diamond rings he found in a toilet. He’s with Mary Trainor, whose mom lost the ring.

Delande took a visit to the Starbucks in Harwich, but had gotten there to late since Trainer had already left work.

Delande called information and soon enough was answering to Trainer’s voicemail box leaving her a long message. While Trainer was screening her calls she suddenly caught Delande saying, “I think I found something you’d be very interested in,” which was when she picked up her phone almost immediately.

The first thing she says when picking up the phone, which completely shocked Delande was, “Please tell me you found the diamond rings.”

Once responding to Trainer, Delande stated, “She was pretty much speechless.”

Trainer told Delande that her mother had been cleaning the rings and then wrapped them up in toilet paper so they can dry up. As Trainer’s mother finished cleaning up the bathroom, she chucked the piece of paper into the toilet and flushed it.

This unfortunate incident happened twelve years ago and her mother had passed away only five years ago. Trainer says she wishes she can show her mother the rings and have her wear them again.