Beaders Blog

Hello beaders! I’m Zack, the jolly Beadaholique customer service representative. Not only do I answer your questions, but those inquiries often inspire my own. And let me tell you, these are the really important questions. Burning questions. Case in point: A few fellow employees and I were discussing the value of my recent haircut. To say it was botched would be a gross understatement. Maybe the scissors were dull; maybe the barber’s lack of digits had some thing to do with it, but we all agreed that it wasn’t worth a lot. The most intriguing comment during the marathon roast was, “That trim wasn’t worth the beads that bought Manhattan.” I couldn’t take this kind of insult lying down, so I hit the books to find the straight dope.

As it turns out, in 1626, a group of Native Americans known as the Canarsee met with Peter Minuit, a representative of the Dutch West India company, to conduct a little business on the island we now call Manhattan. The story has it that Minuit traded sixty guilders, the equivalent of about 1.5lbs of silver, in beads, buttons, and mirrors to the band in exchange for the 20 square mile island. Now, a person could argue for years (383 to be exact) about who actually owned the island, the clash of cultures, and misunderstandings in general, but I’m interested in more important business– how many beads is the island worth today?

First, we have to do a little math. In 2005, the entirety of Central Park’s 843 acres was valued at $528,783,522,000. That means the 12,800 acres that make up the island are worth approximately $8 trillion. If we were to take a modern bead, say a bag of eight clear, eight millimeter Swarovski bicones retailing for $2.25, we would need nearly 18 trillion bags. Since there are eight beads per bag, we’re looking at 144 trillion individual beads. That’s enough beads to wrap around the Earth 28,000 times. If you were to line up each bead end to end, they would extend over 700 million miles. The last bead would almost reach the rings of the planet Saturn. That’s a lot of wampum!

So what can we draw from all of this? Even if we can’t agree on how the island was acquired or the actual current worth of Manhattan, there’s no denying beads make better jewelry than currency. Then again, now that my haircut is valued at around $8 trillion, its sharp angles and sudden bare patches almost seem worth it. Almost.

We’re excited to tell you that beadaholique.com has been selected as a winner of “TheFind100″ in the Crafts category! This is an annual award that recognizes the best 100 e-commerce specialty stores in 16 shopping categories.

We were thrilled when we received an email from Dave Cook, Senior Director of Marketing at The FInd who wrote in part…

“in a typical month visitors to TheFind click through to over 40,000 merchants. Even with this great diversity, our visitors were definitely favoring certain merchants over others in specific categories. Your site has been a consistent choice with our audience in your category, and we are thrilled to recognize you for your excellence in retail.”

…Thanks Dave~!

Chris
beadaholique

Each year the city of Tuscon is host to the ultimate city wide shop-till-you-drop gem shows.  There are no fewer than 4000 dealers and 50 shows taking place all over the city from January thru mid February.

Sarah and I just returned from a four day trip to the city.  Hardly enough time to do all but a small handful of shows, but a very worthwhile time nevertheless.

For those of you who have never attended any of the Tuscon shows I’m posting some photos that I took for you!  I couldn’t think of a better way to convey the sheer size and breadth of these events.  Although last year we more than doubled the number of items that Beadaholique offers, strolling the isles of the Tucson gem shows has inspired us to bring you more new and interesting products than ever before!