Mardon Jewelers at the Mission Inn

Getting your jewelry insured begins by establishing a description and value for the jewelry to be insured. You are entering into a contractual agreement with whomever you choose as your insurer, so you and the company must agree on what it is being insured and for how much. A current retail replacement value appraisal from a qualified jewelry appraiser works best to provide both parties in the contract with the same specific and detailed information.

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from Rapaport

The recent buzz about the 7.03 carat Cullinan Blue diamond to be offered at the upcoming Sotheby’s auction in Geneva has generated a lot of interest in colored diamonds.  Because there is a lot of misinformation about these ultra-rare gems, we thought it would be helpful to our readers to describe and discuss some of the characteristics of Fancy Blue diamonds.

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From Rapaport

A Super Stone is sure to be the talk-of-the-town at the May 12 Sotheby’s auction in Geneva, Switzerland.  Cut from a 26.58 ct. crystal mined at the famed Cullinan Mine in South Africa, the 7.03 ct cushion shaped diamond has been graded Fancy Vivid Blue and Internally Flawless by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA).  Sotheby’s presale estimate is $5.8 million and $8.5 million—that’s around $1,000,000 per carat!

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from Pantone

The annual Pantone color palette for fall 2009 can be downloaded at this link

http://www.pantone.com/downloads/articles/pdfs/PANTONE_FCR_FALL09.pdf

The colors are muted and sophisticated with subtle contrasts.  Time to think about your wardrobe and pick out that special colored gemstone to accent and sparkle things up!  Orange sunstones and Spessartine garnets, purple-red Rhodolite garnets, padparadscha  sapphires and pink tourmalines, blue spinels and iolites, dark blue lapis and azurite, soft green peridots and chrome tourmalines, opals and topazes as well as yellow and brown diamonds will accent the new palette — see some great gemstone choices for a custom piece in our Gallery of Gems.

Check out the wonderful colored stone items in our inventory– just enter or copy and paste the name of your favorite stone into any of the “Search Mardon”  boxes you’ll find on the pages of our website.

From Luxist

Musician Prince reinvents himself one more time with this latest “artPod”, an iPod Touch entitled “Prince Opus Number One” that features extremely rare purple diamonds.  See the full article at http://www.luxist.com/2009/04/14/prince-piece-includes-rare-purple-diamonds/
Watch this Blog for coming info about colored diamonds. It’s easy—sign up for the RSS feed by clicking the “Subscribe” button on this page and you’ll be automatically notified of our postings.

Did you know the Canada Goose is known to mate for life?  Did you know that when the Canada Goose migrates north and south in the classic V formation, each bird, bonded by loyalty and trust, contributes its strength to the group’s progress toward the common destination.

In response to customer requests for more eco-friendly and socially responsible products, Mardon now offers Canada Goose Diamonds.  Canada Goose is the brand of diamond established in 1998 to identify stones produced by Diaco, a major sightholder for the diamond crystals from the Diavik and Ekati mines of northern Canada.  Please, no jokes about Honkin’ diamonds!

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Many people think jewelry insurance is very expensive and that it only covers for theft.  For these and other reasons, some folks don’t carry any insurance on their jewelry when it’s really in their best interest to do so.

The cost of insurance for jewelry is actually pretty reasonable in most areas of the USA. The cost is an annual premium that is a percentage of the replacement cost. The replacement cost is usually determined by an up-to-date appraisal of your jewelry.

Premiums vary depending on where the insured person resides. The current price for replacement insurance thru one typical insurer for single items up to $50,000 in value ranged from a low of .85% for the state of Wisconsin to a high of 3.9% for Brooklyn.  Most states were around 1 %.  In other words, you could buy $10,000 of insurance for $85 per year in Wisconsin, or $390 per year in Brooklyn.  Here in Riverside, the rate of 1.5 %.

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Mardon Jewelers is proud to announce a new relationship with the leading “green” refiner in the USA, Hoover & Strong.

Mardon Jewelers has been an active gold recycler for many years, more so recently with the increased activity in the markets for precious metals.  Like many jewelers we purchase “old” gold from our clients and send it to our refiner for recycling.  See our Blog, Pharaoh’s Gold…

However, we’ve had no way to guarantee that the metal bought from that refiner was only recycled gold—most refiners mix scrap and mined gold to make their products.  Now, Mardon Jewelers will feature 100% recycled gold and other precious metals and we’ll put it in writing!

Hoover and Strong of Richmond, VA does not buy any gold from gold mines, instead relying on the Earth’s existing metal supply to create their precious metals products.  About half of their gold comes from material they recycle directly from jewelers like Mardon, the rest from refiners like themselves who do not buy from mines and only recycle gold.

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As mentioned on the Mardon blog, hexagonal nano-diamonds are part of the evidence for the controversial theory that explains the extinction of such critters as the saber tooth cats and the wooly mammoth that occurred 12,900 years ago.  The latest Nova program, entitled “The Last Extinction”, explores this subject thoroughly and will air again Sunday, April 5,  5 pm, KCET Channel 28.

I recently had the pleasure of appraising this interesting watch.  The design first charmed and then puzzled me.  At first, the straight lines and geometric shapes convinced me it was pure Art Deco, 1925-1940.  The “Curvex” shape seemed to confirm that— Gruen introduced the classic men’s Curvex style shaped to fit the wrist around 1929.  But then I thought about the elongated “Tank” watches designed during WW1 by Cartier.

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