[KobraKarl]

Brett,

Thanks for the book tip , i'll pick one of those up. As far as De Beers......They were absolutely S#itting their fine silk trousers, in the mid eighties after the Soviet Union started to disintegrate....The soviets were/are presumed to sitting on the worlds largest cache of diamonds ....and potentialy poised to shore up their new formed disaster of an economy with those reserves ...dont know what the "bargain" was, to keep that from happening ,but I would bet De Beers was deeply involved.

There is the "Zircon", want to guess which carat weight is "selling more....

Coke has "the name" but their product is probably cheaper today than it was 30 years ago.......and, they are probably out sold by the cumulative"brand X cola " every day.

Shelby certainly is the "diamond /Coke" of the industry , but you cant buy yourself a 1/4 carat Shelby because the 6 carat one is out of reach financially.....Kirkham and the other Zircon cobras will have a market for a while yet....

.I will concede that Kirkham is starting to achieve "diamond status " as a result of thier hard work and market strategy.......if they can maintain their pricing , or even go lower, they may well wipe out some of the weaker sisters.....

KK