Bejewled furby resurfaces - June 2023
Hello everyone! I have been on a slight hiatus due to a myriad of personal reasons, I am back for a short post with some interesting news
a GENUINE Bejeweled furby has surfaced!
Foreword:
This bejeweled furby is in my opinion the only one to exist, as with much other furby information numbers of units produced is a shaky 25 year-old game of telephone. But having researched archived Tiger and FAO sites, it appears all promotional images are the same snowball furby (Notably with green eyes) and we haven’t really seen any different versions, For the information in this post I consulted several archived websites on archive.org along with the new listing
Background info:
The following description is transcribed from the original FAO Schwarz listing for the bejeweled furby.
“Created by designer Sidney Mobell. The world's most exciting tay is now the world's
most precious. bedecked with 156 gleaming and glittering genuine gemstones Lovable Furby comes adorned with a tiara necklace. and earrings crafted in platinum and 18k gold and containing 63 full cut diamonds (3.7 ctw) 44 rubies (4.5 ctw) blue sapphires (5 3 ctw) and emeralds (1.O ctw). AIl 3 pieces are removable So you can wear them too!
A portion of the proceeds will benefit the word class hasbro children's hospital–”
The listing + info
So here is the description of the listing, the starting bid is 1,200.
(ill add it in later once the auction ends)
Now for those of you at home, you may be thinking... a $100,000 furby with an auction cap of $2,000. somthing must be fishy right?
but on paper... the bejweled furby isnt worth that much, and Ill explain.
For those of you who are not jewelers (I have only taken intro classes myself) this furby may appear to be absolutely studded in expensive gems… but in reality the true value is being obscured by the cwt, or Carat Total Weight, this value is in reference to the TOTAL cumulative weight of the gemstones. So for example, the 63 diamonds CWT is 3.7, so each diamond is only 0.06 ct. so in reality the QUALITY of the dimaonds used is very low, for comparison you can purchase 25 loose diamonds of the same color, carat and clarity for around $50
So after a very novice rough calculation the total value of all the metals and gemstones here dont seem to total over $800. This is why I think the piece was designed to be a symbolic representation to the person who donated the $100,000 to the hospital, rather than a truly $100,000 furby which is why the capped value of the auction is $2,000
Conclusion + opinions
I still think this is an absolute amazing piece of furby history, one that I admittedly was not to familiar with, but was aware of in my deep dives into the furby archived sites, I think that the resurfacing of this piece is a ode to the furby community, and the fact that we are STILL actively learning about undiscovered information relating to Furbys a quarter of a century later! This toy line was only produced for just under 3 years but has provided a trove of information that's out there just waiting to be discovered!
And with that, ciao
-Cray
