It’s not often old eggs are sold for very much, but when it’s a 105 year old Faberge Egg covered in pink diamonds there may be an exception. The egg, which also features a miniature clock and a rooster flapping his wings, drew a final price of a staggering $18.5 million, shattering the previous Faberge Egg record of $9.6 million sold in 2002.

Originally created in 1902, this particular egg was purchased by an unnamed Russian collector and it marks a continued return of Russian art to it’s original home in Russia as more and more Russian collectors have he ability to recover them.

DeBeers holds an annual competition design to promote diamond jewelry. This year’s competition for the ‘Best New Piece of Diamond Jewelry of 2007′ with the theme ‘Diamonds-Nature’s Miracle’ was won by the world’s largest diamond jewelry manufacturing company, Rosy Blue.

The winning design, Flotz Brilliance in Air, is inspired by water droplets shimmering on a sunlit lotus leaf. The winning necklace incorporates two thousand five hundred and one diamonds set in white gold and is valued at $36,000.

Harshad Mehta, Chairman, Rosy Blue, said, “Diamond jewelry has the ability to capture the heart and the Flotz diamond collection that incorporates the elements of nature will remind the wearer of the importance of environmental awareness and protection”.

You don’t think that this thing using more than 2500 diamonds had anything to do with it winning DeBeers’ contest to promote diamonds do you?

Ok, this stuff is just cool. Designer Alan K. has taken a bold step by using Stingray leather, dyed various colors, and combined it with sterling silver to create a cool looking line of jewelry. Priced at around $50 per piece, Alan K’s jewelry will make a great fashion statement for those casual outings.

I was reading a great article by Chaim Even-Zohar about the Kimberly Process and how reasonably simply it is to circumvent.

Finished jewelry is not subject to the Kimberly Process and documentation. As it should be. Can you imagine having to carry your Kimberly paperwork everywhere you go when you travel just to prove that you aren’t a diamond smuggler? The problem is that more and more people are putting rough stones in finished jewelry. I love the look by the way.

So now you have the possibility of a small artisan miner finding a large stone, setting it in a simple wire wrapped necklace and smuggling it out of the country to be sold or cut elsewhere. Artisan mines are similar one or two guys working a very small claim like the gold rush days in the Alaska and California. How can you stop it? I certainly don’t know. But it does lead me to my original thoughts on Blood Diamonds and the Kimberly Process.

I’ve always thought that it was a token effort to make people “feel good” about themselves and what they were doing rather than actually trying to address the real problem of substandard living conditions and the rest of the world being willing to look the other way for the sake of money. There have been a few highly publicized arrests involving diamond smuggling, and there has been some good done in the mining towns in Africa. But I think that those things would have been, and were being, done without all the drama of the Di’Caprio movie and the drum beating that we have seen over the last few years.

So what’s next? Even more regulation, even more paperwork, and still no real lasting improvement for the mine workers is my guess.

Seriously, you pamper every other part of your body, why not your lips?

French cosmetics house Guerlain - lipstick innovators since the 1920s - launches KissKiss Gold and Diamonds - a $62,000 lip color wrapped in a 110-gram, 18-karat gold tube encrusted with 199 conflict-free diamonds weighing 2.2 carats, rubies and emeralds. It can be custom-engraved and will be sold exclusively through private consultations at Bergdorf Goodman. And we all know how important it is to have conflict free lips.

Check out the video on the NYPost website.

Now that Big Lots, Family Dollar and Michaels have recalled their lead jewelry lines (43,000 units from Big Lots alone) it seems that bottomless pit that is cheap junk is all lead. I hope that you will excuse me for not being too surprised at all this.

Allow me some editorializing room here. What did everyone think these things were made out of anyway? We, as a nation, have become so conditioned to getting it cheaper and cheaper that we seem to have forgotten that cheap comes at a price. We used to have a saying when I worked in manufacturing, we have fast, we have cheap, and we have good, you get to pick two of the three. Well, everyone wants fast and cheap, that leaves out good.

When everyone keeps screaming cheap cheaper cheaper, and you run out of places where things can be made cheaper, first Mexico, then India, and now China, the only place left to cut costs is in material, and that means lead. So, me suggestion to you is that the next time you are looking for some cheap jewelry for your kid, or yourself, don’t spend the $6 on 3 pair of earrings, step up and spend $20 for a nice pair of sterling silver earrings.

Harry Winston Diamond Corporation (HWD) opened for trading this morning on the NYSE at $39.20 per share. The day’s opening was unique with the NYSE playing Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend before the bell.

Harry Winston is now the largest publicly traded diamond company and $40 you can own a Harry Winston as well.

The video from this morning’s opening is now available at the NYSE website. Launch Video Player

Mass market retailer Kmart is removing all costume jewelry labeled “lead free” from its shelves after lead monitoring programs who tested the pieces found that some of the contained high levels of lead.

The jewelry comes the brand “Accessories” which specializes in low cost sets of costume jewelry that include matching necklaces and earrings. One charm was found to be 52% lead. Not exactly what I would consider lead free myself..

Kmart has decided to pull all jewelry labeled lead free from it’s shelves in an effort to avoid customer confusion.

The contaminated jewelry was tested by Mrs. Karla Johnson with a portable X-ray fluorescent analyzer she had brought home from work to practice with. She discovered that the lead free jewelry she had purchased actually contained 520,000 parts per million of lead. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering a ban on all children’s jewelry (apparently adults don’t need the protection) with a content level higher than 600 parts per million (.06%).