Latest from MrBead with Free Shipping + World's most Expensive Beads

To see the full HTML color version with photos click http://www.mrbead.com/newstockapril08.htm

Click a picture below to see one of our new beads. To receive free airmail shipping enter "freeship16" (without the commas) in the box at checkout, and click "Redeem Coupon". Use NOW - as expires Thursday 24th April 08.

To go to the US MrBead store click MrBead.com. Or our UK shop at MrBead.co.uk

Click a link below to see one of this month's new beads:

New Beads:
Web Agate Tumbled Cube
Moroccan Agate Button
3-Tone Amber Oval
Rich Amber 4mm
Larimar Blue Crazy Lace Agate
Tri-Column Pink Agate
Enchanting Star Amethyst
Marquise Carnelian
Faceted Briolette Crystal
Puff Rectangle Spacers
Silver 9-Petal Spacers
Regal Red Coral Nugget
Twisted Prism Sea Foam Green
Silver Orange Spacers
Silver Weave Spacers
Luscious Red Sardonyx

Most Expensive Beads in the World!

You can buy beads from MrBead for pennies, but a single Roman glass bead sold at auction in 1992 for US$5,250. A few years earlier, the estimated price for a Lukut Sekala in Sarawak (Borneo, East Malaysia) was about $4,000. One Bodom, a glass bead made in West Africa, sold in London in 1931 for £300, then worth $1500 - and now a conservative $30,000!

Yet these don't even come close to the most money spent for a bead! In 1988 over US$700,000 dollars was paid for a necklace of jade beads. This works out to about $8000 per bead. Back in 1973 a jade necklace with fewer beads sold for the equivalent of $12,000 per bead. In 1998 a jadeite necklace of 30 beads sold at Christie's Hong Kong for $942,308, or $31,410 per bead. At the same auction a double-strand jadeite necklace fetched over $450,000 and a strand of black jadeite beads more than $380,000.

However, the real record is a single pendant of jade that sold in Hong Kong in 1988 for $958,974, not Hong Kong dollars, but US dollars. Nearly a million!

Jade is the most valuable bead material. The Chinese valued jade above all else for thousands for years. It was used for jewelry, sacrifices, for painting and writing tools, seals, to bury with the dead and to wear while living. Jade was also prized by the ancient Mexicans and Central Americas. To them it was a symbol of water, therefore of life, and, indeed, a bearer of life itself. The last Aztec Emperor, Moctezuma, gave Cortés three jade beads and told him they were worth 100 pounds of gold each.

To see all What's New in our US store click MrBead.com, or UK MrBead.co.uk
To go to the US MrBead store click MrBead.com. Or our UK shop at MrBead.co.uk
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