[Jewelry making - Article 01323] - Re: [Orchid] Incorporating tanzanite

[Peter W . Rowe]

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>     but then this is the cruise ship circuit, notorious among those in
>     the know. 

    And when you've run out of steam about the gemstone and jewelry
    sales, and apparent collusion between the cruise lines and the
    everpresent chains of, surprisingly enough, the same store names no
    matter which island or port the ship calls at, stores seldom found
    elsewhere, by the way... 

    Well, if you still want to rant some more, how about the art
    auctions these cruises all seem to offer? Fine works of art presented
    onboard at prices which, one is led to believe, are vastly below what
    those works would cost on land, presumably due to differences in tax
    laws, import/export duty, or some such bs. There are some artists
    who's work seems to be available only on those ships, since for some
    strange reason, land based dealers don't want to carry it. And people
    who bring their shipboard purchases to a knowledgeable art appraiser
    often find the price they paid to be at least equal to what the stuff
    would sell for on land, and sometimes a good deal more.... 

    All of which is a good strong argument in favor of vacation trips
    that do not involve large floating hotels sitting out where they're
    not so subject to land based regulations and laws. The art auctions,
    by the way, also seem to be held very close to the ship board
    casinos, just in case you've got some cash left over... 

    But I gotta admit. The one cruise i took with my mom up to Alaska
    took us to hauntingly beautiful places I'd never have seen in my
    lifetime without that boat. Memories well worth having paid for. Not
    sure sure about the bit in the price that included a few days worth
    of Norovirus. But that's all part of the game, I guess. And the two
    silly prints I bought at that auction in a fit of misplaced and lost
    common sense and auction fever, well, they might not be worth what I
    paid for them (they're not. I checked, later). But they're still
    pretty enough, and bring back good memories. Now, they were in the
    hundred dollar range for the two, not the tens of thousands some
    folks pay for overpriced, overhyped, sometimes misrepresented
    gemstones and jewelry. But perhaps for those poor victims, the
    souvenir / memory value of these overpriced baubles makes up, a
    little, for the high price paid. One can at least hope so. And all
    things considered, it's not so much different from the bs used to
    market sometimes even worse junk on the TV shopping channels... So
    it's not just the cruise ships doing this sort of crap. 

Peter
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