Here is a sample of what 4,604.00 USD buys you at your local scrap yard these days. There was no trace of my stuff being dumped this week, but I did battle for some prize goods. I had to battle because there is a pecking order. Although I was there first, the guy with the yamaka took me for a rookie and decided to "help me out" by going through the bins first and passing me crap he thought I'd like. His true motive however, was to get to the diamonds first. You see, the price of gold is so outrageous that it is not worth some people's time to bother separating the stones. Good thing I wasn't interested in the diamonds, they creep me out. We all know by now, thanks to Hollywood and beyond, that diamonds represent eternal love only by way of arms exchange and civil war. Gold is equally disturbing. Since the resource is so fine and scarce, it takes cyanide to separate it from the ore it lives in. The extraction process leaves traces of mercury, arsenic, lead and cyanide in our water systems. The nice thing about gold is that, unlike diamond, the old stuff can be reshaped and reformed ('I love Jesus' is not an uncommon charm) while maintaining its material integrity. My goal is to keep some of its formal history in the process of re-building. You can actually visualize the dead guy's story whose teeth are hanging from your ears...if you feel like it. Anyway, occasionally a diamond gets in my mix and this time it was a 12 pointer. We know it is a diamond because my local setter took a dremmel blade to it and it didn't even mark. This could be big business, but I have a better idea, I will work on a piece (not a skull) using these bits and donate it back to the cause....or the Iziko museum of South Africa.
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