Beethoven Back on the Keyboard

LifeGem, a company that will compress yours, your loved one’s or your pet’s ashes into diamonds, did just that to a lock of hair from Ludwig Van Beethoven. Out of that lock came three diamonds. One of them is up for bid on Ebay for a million bucks.

From the Register here:

A synthetic diamond company has transformed 10 strands of Beethoven’s hair into a “Fancy Blue” 0.56 carat gem expected to sell for up to $1m on eBay.

According to the Telegraph, LifeGem obtained the sample of the composer’s locks from the University Archives in Connecticut, which boasts barnet samples from a raft of celebs including Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon.

Experts at LifeGem’s Chicago HQ burned the hair without oxygen to ensure it didn’t disintegrate, then extracted 130 milligrams of carbon destined for three separate diamonds formed by heating the material to very high temperatures and then pressing it for two weeks.

One of the resulting “Round Brilliant” gems will go to the University Archives, LifeGem will keep another, while the third will be auctioned for the benefit of various charities.

Lifegem’s site is here. I have mixed feelings about the prospect of turning myself into a diamond when I die. It seems morbid, but then again, part of me would last forever. Prices are way steep though. Maybe some competition in the space will drive prices down. But I don’t know how I’d feel about being turned into a gemstone from “Dale’s Discount Death Diamonds,” either.