My wife and I cruised on the Carnival Legend a couple months ago. Since my wife loves jewelry, we made numerous visits to the ships store to check out the various sales, and give aways.
One of the give aways, was more of a contest. They showed three pieces of amber jewelry, one of which was a fake. You were supposed to figure out which one was the fake. One of the pieces was a normal honey amber color with red specks. Another was a dark maroon. Yet another was a pale green. Green amber? The green amber seemed to be too obvious. The red specks seemed to look fake in the honey amber piece. Then I noticed a poster with amber jewelry, and one had a pale green amber like in the display. So we chose the honey amber piece as being the fake.
We were right, but so were a lot of other people. We didn’t win.
Apparently the pale green amber was something called Caribbean Amber. Caribbean amber was discovered only recently on the island of Dominica, and is only found there. It is kind of rare due to the limited supply, and the dangers of mining it. The tunnels from it is mined often collapse from geological shifts.
Apparently the mining rights for the Caribbean amber is exclusive. I am not clear on who has them. It might the be the company that runs the stores on the Carnival cruise ships. The jewelry that was on display had was all made by Valerio 888, a company that seems to specialize in amber jewelry.
When my wife wasn’t looking, I bought a Caribbean amber bracelet which I intend to give her for a birthday, or anniversary present at sometime in the future.
Fortunatly, I don’t think she looks at this site.
Later, we also bought a ring made with Caribbean amber.
The ring is bigger than anything she would wear, but we were thinking of having the piece of Caribbean amber remounted into a pendant.
Dear RJ,
I so appreciated and enjoyed this entry - THANK YOU very much! I just returned from my first ever cruise and saw Caribbean Amber for the first time as well. Honey and Cherry Ambers are already favorites of mine, but I think they’ve been bumped down my ranking scale by their recenty discovered Caribbean cousin.
I saw the Valerio 888 pieces just as you mentioned. SO LOVELY, So Tranquil. Green is a color of health and wellness, and since I have been on a healing journey to improve my health and create a vibrant, energetic body and soul, it drew me in like a lulling harp.
Purchasing jewelry was not in my financial plans this time around, so I’ll research the gemstone and its mining history to assist me in my buying perhaps at my next cruise. I found what you had to say about the mining saftey very helpful to that process.
THANK YOU again, and until I travel over your corner of cyberspace, I bid you vaya con Dios, mi amigo.
chalana
Comment by Chalane Wride — May 26, 2008 @ 6:07 am