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Dallas Prince 2.85ctw Oval Pink Morganite & Red Ruby Wide Ring
Classic style elements decorated by lovely rich color and alluring shimmer. Crafted in polished 18K rose gold plated sterling silver, this elegant ring prominently displays one oval shaped faceted 10x8mm peach morganite in a bezel setting at the center surrounded by a beaded texture. Four trios of round faceted 2mm red rubies in bezel settings alternate with a fleur-de-lis design to embellish the setting.
The ring measures 1"L x 7/8"W x 3/8"H and has an undergallery for added comfort. The total morganite weight is 2.25ct and the total ruby weight is 0.60ct, both approximate.
Part of the Dallas Prince Collection. Casted in China, assembled & finished in Canada. All weights pertaining to diamond weights are minimum weights. Additionally, please note that many gemstones are treated to enhance their beauty. Click here for important information about gemstone enhancements and special care requirements.
Vermeil Plating:
Pronounced "vermay," vermeil is an electroplating process in which 14K gold or higher is coated over sterling silver. Officially designated by the jewelry industry, items may only be sold as vermeil if they have a minimum thickness of 100 millionths of an inch (2.5 microns) of gold over the silver. Regular gold plating is less than 2.5 microns.
The "vermeil" technique of plating sterling silver with gold originated in France in the 1750s. It differs from "gold filled" or "gold plated" in terms of the thickness or thinness of the microns over sterling silver. "Gold filled" pieces have a much thicker layer, between 15 and 45 microns, which is mechanically bonded to the base metal with heat and pressure. Vermeil is a more expensive version of "gold plated". It does not wear off as quickly as gold plating does. However, over time, vermeil wears off and therefore will require re-plating.
Gold/Platinum Embraced Silver or Bronze:
Our platinum and gold embraced collections feature layers of platinum or gold over sterling silver or bronze for a lustrous, radiant finish everywhere you look and touch.
To care for your plated jewelry items:
For thousands of years, ruby has been considered one of the most valuable gemstones on Earth. It is called the "King of Gemstones" and known as the stone of love. The gem is the red variety of the mineral corundum, and while any other color of corundum is denominated as "sapphire," only red corundum may be called "ruby." Pure corundum is colorless, but slight traces of elements are responsible for ruby's purplish bluish-red to orange-red color. In fact, the name "ruby" was derived from the Latin word "rubens," meaning "red."
The finest rubies are an intensely saturated pure red with no overtones of brown or blue. They are readily available in sizes up to 2.00ct and have incredible durability, ranking a 9.0 on the Mohs Scale (second only to diamonds in hardness). Rubies may show very different shades of red depending on their origin, and the range of these reds is quite considerable. The gem's intense color was once thought to come from an undying flame inside the stone, while other legends say each stone is a piece of the planet Mars.
Some rubies distinguish themselves with a wonderful silky shine, called the "silk" of the stone, which is created by fine rutile needles within the gem. The rutile mineral is also involved within very scarce "star" rubies. As can be found in sapphires, there is a translucent variety of ruby that displays a six-point star when cut into a smooth domed cabochon. Rutile is embedded in an asterisk-shape within the ruby, causing a captivating light effect called "asterism." Six-ray stars appear to magically glide across the surface of the stones as they are moved. Star rubies are expensive rarities and should always display the stars exactly in the center of the gem. The star stone is said to be the home of each person's angel, who lives there in contentment with the ruby's spirit.
Rubies are found in many countries throughout the world, each location producing rubies of specific qualities and colors. Gemstone experts agree that the Burmese ruby is the most valuable and luxurious category of the stone. The former country of Burma, now Myanmar, is situated in a mountain valley surrounded by high summits. Rubies that are mined from this "Valley of Rubies" feature an exceptionally vivid red color with a slightly bluish hue. The stones display their unique brilliance in both natural and artificial light.
Rubies from Thailand, another classical supplier of the gem, are often dark red tending towards brown. This "Siam color" is considered almost as beautiful as the Burma color. Rare rubies from Ceylon are mainly light red, like ripe raspberries, while rubies of Vietnamese origin generally display a slightly purplish hue. Rubies are also produced in India, where relatively large ruby crystals have been discovered. These particular rubies, however, have many inclusions, but are excellently suited to be cut as beads or cabochons. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia have also produced occasional top-quality rubies, but the rough terrain in these areas has made mining difficult.
Top-quality rubies are quite rare and are often considered even more valuable than colorless diamonds, particularly in sizes above 5.00ct. High prices tend to reflect their tremendous value. In 1988, a 16.00ct ruby sold at auction for $227,301 at Sotheby's in Geneva, Switzerland. A 27.37ct Burmese ruby ring sold for $4 million at Sotheby's in 1995, which was an astounding $146,145 per carat.
It is possible that no other gemstone has been as prized as the ruby. Celebrated in the Bible and in ancient Sanskrit writings as the most precious of all gemstones, rubies have adorned emperors and kings throughout history. Until improvements in chemical testing in the 1800s, most red gem-quality stones were called rubies. Thus, many of the famous "rubies" in the crown jewels of Europe, including Britain's "Black Ruby" and the "Timur Ruby," have since been identified as red spinels or garnets. Today, rubies continue to decorate the insignia of many Royal Houses.
In the 13th century, traveler Marco Polo wrote that Kublai Kahn, the Mongol Emperor of China, once offered an entire city for a ruby the size of a man's finger. In ancient Hindu writings, the ruby represents the sun power. In China, the stone was given as offerings to Buddha.
Rubies were also given as offerings to Krishna in India. For a long time, India was considered the classical country of rubies. Their literature offers a rich and varied knowledge of the stone that was collected and handed down for over two thousand years. In the Sanskrit language, ruby is called "ratnaraj," which translates as "king of gemstones." Whenever a spectacular ruby was found, the emperor would send out his notables to welcome the precious gemstone in an appropriate style fit for a king.
In the Middle Ages, it was believed that a ruby could change color and grow darker to warn its owner that danger or illness was near. Thought to ward off misfortune, it was believed to chase away evil spirits and the spirits of the dead. The deep red color of rubies has been used for centuries as protection and to convey invulnerability. Soldiers wore them into battle to guard against wounds and promote healing if they received a wound. The color of blood, the stone is symbolic of courage and bravery. Warriors were said to have implanted rubies under their skin to bring them valor in battle, make them invincible against enemies and ensure victory.
Rubies have also been historically thought to bestow wisdom, wealth and love. In China and Europe during the 10th century, dragons and snakes were carved in the gems' surfaces to increase the flow of money and power to their owners. A common belief was that dreaming of rubies meant the coming of success in business and money matters. Rubies were also used to capture a mate and light the passion of romance. The gem was believed to have the magical powers of sexual fire and success in love. It has also been said by ancient lore to be capable of reconciling lovers' quarrels.
When combined with gold and worn on the body, it is said that rubies can cause the body to rejuvenate and absorb energy from the sun to heal all types of body sickness and skin afflictions. It is believed that it should be worn with gold to banish sadness and bring joy.
Given as a symbol of success, devotion and integrity, the ruby is July's birthstone and the traditional gift for 15th and 40th wedding anniversaries. Rubies have symbolized passion and romance for centuries, so when placed in engagement rings, they express unbridled love and promise of the heart.
Morganite is the soft pink, sometimes peach or lavender colored, variety of beryl. Often referred to as "pink beryl," morganite has been called "pink emerald" and "pink aquamarine" to emphasize the kinship to its popular cousins. The pastel gem is colored by trace amounts of manganese in the crystal structure. It has excellent fire and is dichroic, meaning it shows pink hues when viewed from one angle and near colorless properties from another. Almost all morganite is heat-treated to produce or enhance the pink color. Lower quality morganite occurs in colors ranging from a peach-orange to a pinkish-yellow, but once it's heat-treated, the color changes to a beautiful soft pink.
First discovered in Madagascar in 1911, morganite was named after the American banker and gem enthusiast, John Pierpont Morgan. Legend says that he went down with the Titanic, but Morgan actually missed the doomed maiden voyage and died the following year in Rome, just shy of his 76th birthday. While morganite can be found in Mozambique, Namibia, Afghanistan, Russia and the United States, the finest morganites come from Madagascar and Brazil. In fact, the largest faceted morganite came from Madagascar. It is a 598.70ct cushion-shaped stone residing in the British Museum.
Morganite's hardness ranks 7.5-8.0 on the Mohs Scale. With its dazzling luster, exquisite color and sufficient hardness, the stone is especially suitable for jewelry. Unfortunately, morganite is relatively rare. This fact alone prevents it from achieving greater popularity as a jewelry gem.


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Fewer Trades, More Gains
The economy may be anemic, but the stock market has been flush. Over the past year, Standard & Poor's 500-stock index returned 27%, and since the middle of November, it has gone nearly straight up. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but bull markets aren't forever. Investors earn their money not in good times but in bad — when they muster the courage to hang on. The alternative, broadly called "trading," is bad for your investment health. As Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, put it, "Much success can be attributed to inactivity."
QUIZ: Are You a Trader or an Investor?
Inactivity works in part because no one really knows the best time to buy or sell. That's because the market is efficient: Today's prices are the sum of everything known and suspected by millions of investors about every stock. Tomorrow, the market will respond to new information, which, by definition, is unknowable today.
To make educated guesses about the long term, we can glean clues from history. We know, for example, that a diversified portfolio of U.S. stocks has returned about 10% annualized, or 7% after inflation, for nearly a century. We know that what goes up goes down, and vice versa, and that the overall trend is up. We know that trading stocks is a bad strategy. Fear and greed impel us to sell at the wrong times. Trading generates taxes, and taxes, combined with trading costs, erode long-term returns.
In 2000, Brad Barber and Terrance Odean, professors at the University of California at Davis, published a groundbreaking study in the Journal of Finance titled, "Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth." They received access to the records of more than 66,000 customers of a large discount brokerage. They found that people who traded the most averaged returns that were 30% lower than those of the average customer — and 36% lower than the stock market itself.
The cost of trading is one facet of investing that you can control. Those costs apply not just to individual stocks but to mutual funds. Fund managers are under pressure to trade to justify their often-exorbitant salaries. Fidelity Large Cap Growth (symbol FSLGX), for instance, has annual turnover of 151%, which suggests that the fund turns over its entire portfolio every eight months. And the typical fund that invests in large companies with a blend of growth and value attributes turns over its holdings at a rate of 70%, meaning that the average stock is held less than a year and a half.
Expense drag. Many investors assume that the main cost in owning a mutual fund is the expense ratio, which includes the cost of managing the portfolio; legal, accounting and printing expenses; and sometimes marketing costs. For U.S. stock funds, that fee averages 1.19% of a fund's assets annually, according to a new study covering 1995 through 2006 by researchers Roger Edelen, Richard Evans and Gregory Kadlec.
Over time, these fees mount up. Consider the Fidelity fund mentioned above. Its expense ratio, at 0.90%, is below average. But if you invest $10,000 and the fund returns an annualized 10% over the next decade, you will pay $1,444 in expenses, or 10.6% of your profits, according to Fund Analyzer, an online tool provided at Finra.org. (Finra is the brokerage industry's self-regulatory body.)
But Edelen and his colleagues also found that the costs of trading the securities in the average stock mutual fund (what they call "aggregate costs") came to another 1.44%. These costs aren't transparent. You don't write a check for them each year, and they don't appear on a line in a fund's prospectus, as the expense ratio does; they show up only in a fund's diminished return.
And that brings us to the essential question: Can funds generate returns that overcome those high costs? An expensive BMW performs better than a low-priced Honda, so shouldn't a high-cost fund deliver better returns than a low-cost one, even after taking all expenses into account? With regard to total costs, the Edelen study confirms what other research has shown on the matter of expense ratios: The luxury brands turn out to be clunkers. "We found a strong negative relation," says the study, "between aggregate trading cost and fund return performance."
It's a rare stock picker who consistently beats the market. So if nearly every fund manager generates gross returns that are close to the market averages, then the fund's costs become the single most powerful determinant of its net returns — that is, of what you get to keep in your pocket.

subset: commoncrawl


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For several hours yesterday a drone was flying over our property and a few properties adjacent to ours. We live in the county. It seemed like such an invasion of our privacy that we concluded we could (A) call some "official," (B) shoot it down with a shotgun (probably not legal), (C) moon it, or (D) all of the above. Most of our friends recommended option (D), but we are opting for (A) — with you as our "official." What legal recourse does a landowner have? Thanks!
— Vicki Purslow,Jackson County
You were on the right side of the law steering clear of option (B) Vicki, though who could blame you had it been chosen.
Here is the letter of the law.
In 2012, the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 2710 to regulate the use of drones in Oregon. The vast majority of the bill is directed toward law enforcement use of drones, but there is a civil section of the bill that covers your dilemma.
It states that a property owner can take legal action against the operator of a drone, but only if the drone is being flown at a height of less that 400 feet over the property against the wishes of the property owner.
Before suing the drone operator, you, as the property owner, must notify the operator that you do not want the drone flown over your property at a height of less than 400 feet.
If the civil lawsuit is decided in your favor, according to the bill, you "may recover treble damages for any injury to the person or the property by reason of a trespass by a drone ... and may be awarded injunctive relief in the action."
Your attorney fees also will be repaid if the amount pleaded is less than $10,000.
In Oregon, this bill is the only law regulating drones as of now, because it bars local governments from creating laws to regulate drones.
Send questions to "Since You Asked," Mail Tribune Newsroom, P.O. Box 1108, Medford, OR 97501; by fax to 541-776-4376; or by email to firstname.lastname@example.com. We're sorry, but the volume of questions received prevents us from answering all of them.
Location, ST | website.com