Experience in investing in silver

Came across this deal on deal.com.sg :

An offer of 1 oz Johnson Mattey 999 silver bar plus a 5 grams Scotsdale 999 Fine Silver Bar going at a special price of SGD$ 99.90

Thus, decided to snap up some as a form of investment!

Lunar new year coins 2012

The lunar new year if the dragon is fast approaching with 23/01/12 being the first day of the lunar new year.

After looking at the advertisement by the Singapore Mint, feel so tempted to start buying.

The negative impacts of Integrated Resorts in Singapore.

Was browsing thru Stomp earlier and came across this news article about how a Taka Jewellery employee actually took $1.1 million worth of shop's jewellery and cash to gamble.

Is it still too early to feel the negative impact from the Intergrated Resorts? Is the IR the better of the evil?

Kinda strikes a chord within me, especially since I know this Sales person when she served me.

Wong Siew Teng was working as a jewellery store supervisor when the urge to gamble took over her life for six months last year.

She made weekly trips to the casino at Resorts World Sentosa.

Sometimes, she would go twice a week. But she did not gamble with her own money.

She took diamonds and jewellery from her store, Taka Jewellery’s outlet in Kovan.

She ordered expensive jewellery from the chain’s other shops, lying to colleagues that she had interested buyers.

She took customers’ jewellery. She even took cash from the till.

She pawned the valuables and used the money to gamble.

When she won, she would redeem the pawned items and replace them in the shop.

However, her luck ran out, and her losses piled up. And when her employers discovered things amiss at the shop, the game was up.

Yesterday, the Malaysian was jailed for five years. In all, the petite 30-year-old pocketed jewellery and money worth $1.1 million.

She pleaded guilty last month to charges of criminal breach of trust and laundering criminal proceeds at the casino.

The items she took included loose diamonds, diamond rings, diamond ear studs and diamond bracelets – in fact, anything with diamonds.

She started taking the valuables in June last year. She pawned two diamond rings for $10,200 and headed for Sentosa.

She won at the casino, redeemed the items and replaced them in the shop. A week later, she took another diamond ring, and did the same.

However, her winning streak did not last, and she was soon over her head and unable to redeem the pawned jewellery.

The more she gambled, the greater were her losses. Then, last November, Taka went to the police over discrepancies in its Kovan sales records.

Investigations revealed how Wong trawled the chain’s database for jewellery with diamonds of at least one carat at the other branches.

She would ask for the items to be sent to Kovan, saying she had a potential customer, then pawned them.

When the branches needed their jewellery back, Wong took cash from the till to redeem them.

She also convinced customers to place cash deposits for pieces of jewellery, telling them these would be a good buy. In reality, the items had been pawned.

Between June and November last year, she took 109 items belonging to Taka or its clients and embezzled $64,000 in cash.

She pawned the jewellery at Big Max, Valuemax or Moneymax.

Police recovered about $774,000 worth of jewellery from the pawn shops and an inquiry will be held to find the rightful owners.

Defence counsel Sukdave Singh said Wong had acted out of character, saying she had been depressed after being jilted by her boyfriend.

New Year Shopping

Was at Jurong Point today when I came across the Singapore Mint Roadshow whereby they display a whole range of products from Singapore Mint. The personal practice of buying a gold coin, or rather a small gold coin, every Lunar New Year has not waned for me.

However, I was a little disappointed when the 3 teenagers manning the little booth at Jurong Point were more interested in talking amongst themselves and fiddling with the apps on their iPhones then to bother to attend to customers.

Worst still... when I asked them about the product specifications, like how heavy the coin was, how much the pricing was, etc. They too were not familiar...

Nonetheless, after looking thru the catalogue which was provided there, I finally managed to get all the specifications and pricing right. Which makes me wonder, why even bother to set up a booth there, when they could have merely set up a vending machine?

Gold roses, anyone?

The roses, which were made of Au99.99 gold foil were displayed in the shape of a heart at a jeweley store in Nanjing, the capital of East China's Jiangsu province on Dec 15.

They are worth 600,000 yuan (US$90,165) and were bought by a man, whose surname means 'gold' in Chinese, according to an online report.

UAE hotel erects 11-million-dollar Christmas tree

ABU DHABI (AFP) - – Christmas came in extravagant fashion to the Muslim desert emirate of Abu Dhabi as a glitzy hotel unveiled a bejewelled Christmas tree valued at more than 11 million dollars on Wednesday.
It is the "most expensive Christmas tree ever," with a "value of over 11 million dollars," said Hans Olbertz, general manager of Emirates Palace hotel, at its inauguration.
The 13-metre (40-foot) faux evergreen, located in the gold leaf-bedecked rotunda of the hotel, is decorated with silver and gold bows, ball-shaped ornaments and small white lights.

But the necklaces, earrings and other jewellery draped around the tree's branches are what give it a record value.

It holds a total of 181 diamonds, pearls, emeralds, sapphires and other precious stones, said Khalifa Khouri, owner of Style Gallery, which provided the jewellery.

"The tree itself is about 10,000 dollars," Olbertz said. "The jewellery has a value of over 11 million dollars -- I think 11.4, 11.5."

This will probably be an entry into the Guinness book of world records, Olbertz said, adding that Emirates Palace planned to contact the organisation about the tree which is to stay until the end of the year.

Asked if the tree might offend religious sensibilities in the United Arab Emirates, where the vast majority of the local population is Muslim, Olbertz said he did not think it would. "It's a very liberal country," he said.

The hotel has had a Christmas tree up in previous years, but this year "we said we have to do something different," and the hotel's marketing team hatched the plan, said Olbertz.

The tree is not the first extravagant offering from Emirates Palace -- a massive, dome-topped hotel sitting amid fountains and carefully manicured lawns.

The hotel, which bills itself as seven-star, in February introduced a package for a seven-day stay priced at one million dollars.

Takers of the package have a private butler and a chauffeur driven Maybach luxury car at their disposal during their stay, as well as a private jet available for trips to other countries in the region.

And in May, the hotel opened a gold vending machine, becoming the first place outside Germany to install "gold to go, the world's first gold vending machine," said Ex Oriente Lux AG, the German company behind the machine.

Diamond swapper nabbed

A MAN has been arrested for swapping real diamonds with replica diamond crystals at goldsmith shops.

Police arrested the 38-year-old suspect on Thursday night.

The man entered busy goldsmith stores, pretending as if he wanted to purchase a one-carat diamond and asking to examine it.

He would wait for the shop attendant to look away or attend to other customers before swapping the genuine diamond for the fake. The man would then leave the store claiming he needed more time to consider.

The suspect was caught near Yio Chu Kang MRT station in an operation staged on Thursday.

He will be tried in court for cheating on Saturday under Section 420 Chapter 224. If convicted, he faces imprisonment of up to 10 years and shall also be liable to fine.