I have spent approximately eight seasons of available Frontline episodes converting this into an excel spreadsheet for market research purposes. Having seen the price on that page I'm a little taken aback; I bought it for $7. Nonetheless, being able to methodically go through everything (and I have more than a dozen other years on deck) has created insight. It has also led to the purchase of two other books, one of which is incredibly promising and the other of which remains to be seen. I am down to "Harry Winston" "Xemex" and "Zenith", approximately fifteen pages of ingest left of 377. My wife's receptionist knows a gemcutter in Thailand. Now I know a gemcutter in Thailand. I've commissioned a pentagonal faceting job on an Oregon Sunstone. It's going to go in a pendant that will hang on a Viking knit cord, most likely of 28ga sterling wire. I've also probably made 7 feet of viking knit. I'm not exactly good at it, but I'm getting better. I've got a 10-year anniversary coming up. According to Quicken I spent approximately $21k last year in pursuit of horological goals. I have 51 college credits towards this. I guess it's real.
Dang, what do you get out of the book? Model names, prizes, complications? I would totally be interested in the average price and standard deviations per complication, maybe regressed to how expensive the brand is in general. Hmu if you need some data science help!
At the risk of two anecdotes=trend, I met a South African woman in Bali. She said she was impressed with the metalworker she contracts all her jewelry making to in town (for dirt cheap). Is this a southeast Asian thing?
Bangkok is kind of the epicenter of gemcutting. The gem markets there are pretty well off the chain. I'll probably be buying some melee (tiny loose faceted stones) off him because the price in the markets is about 1/100 what it is in the US. Silversmithing, on the other hand, requires minimal tooling and can be self-taught. There tend to be lots of talented silversmiths in places where large jewelry markets don't exist.