Tuesday, March 18, 2014

More fine tuning and a crazy coincidence with a huge diamond.

I submitted my text to Create Space for review and got back some warnings about low-resolution images in the book.

After going through it again, I realized that I also had some colour graphs in a book which is supposed to be black and white.  So I fixed those issues as well.

I went through things again and made a few slight changes.

Here's what I really want to talk about; today I had a totally serendipitous conversation with a building contractor.   I met him at his office and while I was there, a courier came to deliver a package.

He opened it in front of me and showed me a 2.5ct teardrop diamond.  He also showed me the appraisal certificate saying it was worth over $65,000.  I told him about the book project and how I had just written the section on collectibles in the asset class portion of the book.

I asked him how and why get got into gemstones and his answer could have been quoted from the book.  "As a contractor, people are always looking for personal guarantees on contracts for buildings and financing.  They're always trying to assess my property and see what I own that could stand as collateral.  Nobody I do business knows about these gems and if anything were ever to go wrong, I can move on with substantial wealth in my pocket."

He then went on to recount the first time he had purchased a stone, it was a ruby worth only $3,000.  He trades them in  and buys and sells them, he uses three different dealers.

He invests a lot of time expanding his knowledge of this particular type of collectible investment.

I'm hoping the book will help many readers realize the pros and cons of developing a truly diversified portfolio of assets.

I just sent the book off again for a final review by Aaron.  Let's see how much he highlights for review...

Thanks

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