The first production Acura NSX of the 2017 Model Year was sold at a Barrett-Jackson auction for $1.2 million. The 2017 Acura NSX's production has begun and the first ever car to leave the US factory went under the hammer.
The starting price in the US for an Acura NSX is $156,000 while a fully-loaded model will cost around $205,000. Customers who go for the fully-loaded car get a carbon fiber roof, carbon ceramic brakes, and more appropriate options.
The second-generation Acura NSX is built only at the Performance Manufacturing Center in Marysville, Ohio. The car with VIN #001 was purchased by Nascar team owner Rick Hendrick for six times more than what a fully-loaded version would have cost. The Nascar team owner will add the #001 2017 Acura NSX to his collection, held at a museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Hendrick has a thing for cars with the VIN No. 001, as he also owns the first production cars of the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, 2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible, 2014 Corvette, and 2015 Corvette Convertible.
Yowah is a small town in outback western Queensland, Australia. Yowah is located 938 kilometres west of Brisbane and 132 kilometres west of Cunnamulla. The 2006 census revealed a population of 142.
The town is famous for its opal mining and numerous opal fields that lie around the town as well as the "Yowah Nut" a local type of opal distinctive to the region. The area was first leased in 1883 to perspective settlers and opal mining has been the main activity ever since.
The Yowah field is an occurrence of opal in siliceous ironstone nodules generally referred to as Yowah Nuts. These nuts have a spherical or ellipsoidal shape, and show alternate bands of light and dark-brown siliceous ironstone. There is sometimes a kernel of precious opal, which is the main source of the gem.
The nuts are found in layers (150–600mm in thickness) at depths up to 20m in a ferruginous sandstone, and are commonly associated with mudstone fragments or clay pellets.
Auctions will be held February 18 in London and online between February 16 and 23 offering a number of exclusive items from "Spectre," the 24th film in the Bond franchise.
The live auction will include 10 lots of secret-agent memorabilia including an Aston Martin DB10.
One of the 10 Aston Martin DB10 cars used in the filming, the lot comes with a signed license plate by actor Daniel Craig and is estimated to fetch between 1 million and 1.5 million pounds
Proceeds from the sale will be given to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) and other charities.
In 2002 the sale of the statue broke the world auction record for an antiquity sale (of that time) after selling for nearly $12 million at Christie’s London.
The Jenkins Venus: $11.7 Million. The Jenkis Venus, also known as the Barberini Venus is a copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos statue, which is was one of the most famous works of Praxiteles, an ancient Greek sculptor.
Considered the most important Cycladic idol ever to come to auction, the Cycladic reclining female figure with an estimated value of $3-5 million, was sold by Christie’s for a jaw-dropping almost $17 million in December of 2010.
Bronze Figure Of A Tapir: $12 Million. This bronze figure is a preeminent example of Chinese figurines of the 4th century B.C. The bronze figure portrayed a pig-like mammal that became extinct in China about 10,000 years ago.
The statue depicting Leda and the swan was discovered around 1775 in Rome, and is a Roman replica of a Greek statue from about 300 B.C. The statue was sold by Sotheby’s New York for over $19 million.
The sculpture, ‘Roman Bust of Antinous’, was sold by Sotheby’s in 2010 for almost $24 million.
Artemis and the Stag: $28.6 Million. Artemis and the Stag, was the highest priced statue ever sold at the time (2007).
Found near Baghdad, Iraq, The Guennol Lioness is a 5,000-year-old limestone Mesopotamian statue. The sculpture was described by Sotheby’s as “one of the last known masterworks from the dawn of civilization remaining in private hands.” The sculpture portrays an anthropomorphic lioness-woman and was sold for $57.2 million in 2007
The Kagem emerald mine is the world’s single largest producer of emeralds and accounts for approximately 20% of global emerald production.
It covers an area of approximately 41 square kilometres and is located in the central part of the Ndola Rural Emerald Restricted Area, in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia.
In 2004 Gemfields Resources PLC started systematic exploration south of the Ndola River, and made some important discoveries. Mining began in 2005. By 2007, Gemfields had acquired 100 percent ownership of two mines in the area.
In June 2008, Gemfields formed a collaboration with the Zambian government, establishing a 75/25 ownership split of the Kagem emerald mine.
Miners chisel the reaction zone rock to recover any emeralds it might contain.
Security and supervisory staff are always present during hand-chiseling of the exposed contact zone to recover the emeralds. This not only helps to secure the emeralds from theft but also helps to provide complete transparency of recovery.
Any production found goes into a locked production box.
Kagem is primarily an open-pit mine. Gemfields uses a strip-and-fill method to mine its deposits. A pushback occurs when they move the highwall of the pit farther back to continue exploiting the deposit.
The mine is expected to have another 25 years of life.
Once ore is transported to the washing plant, it follows a process that is typical of coloured gemstone mining operations. Screens are used to break down the material by size and then washers remove the silt to expose the potential emerald-bearing schist for hand pickers to examine.
Production capacity of the open-pit mine is around 8,000 tons of ore a month.
Cobbing is a very important step that removes highly included areas from the emerald rough.
Size classification is important since small stones are often less included than larger ones.
