On TBBT, are we supposed to think that Amy’s tiara is made of real diamonds? Or is it a rhinestone prom queen hat?
Sheldon bought it a jewelry store, not Claire’s, so it might be real. But how could he possibly afford it? I googled around and the cheapest real tiara I could find is this one: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/jewelry/a-diamond-tiara-5157544-details.aspx It sold for $15K and isn’t nearly as thickly encrusted with stones as Amy’s.
What do you think? Real or rhinestone? Or something in the middle, like Swarovski?
I’m sure it’s just rhinestones (prom queen hat?). The cheap silver bag and the velvet thing it was in makes me think he picked it up in a mall, so it was probably something for, say, $200 that he picked up at Zales or more likely a department store jewelry counter.
Ya think? He’s in academia. There are few munificent salaries in that milieu. Doesn’t Penny tell the golddigger upstairs that the guys don’t earn much money? Sheldon doesn’t hold any patents that bring in additional income (he’s a theoretical physicist, after all), he never mentions investments and we’ve seen his mother’s house - no money in that family.
Yes, there was the time he pulled out a wad of cash to lend to Penny, but I doubt that his stash amounted to more than a couple of thou. After all, he can’t even afford to live alone. Don’t tell me that he lives with Leonard because he’s emotionally dependent on him - sure, he is now, but at the start it was purely a financial arrangement.
I’m not saying he’s struggling to get by; he lives comfortably and indulges himself in toys, travel and take-out. He’s no doubt got an adequate income. But can he run to a diamond tiara?
He has plenty of money because he does share an apartment with Leonard and rarely spends anything. He doesn’t own a car, he’s not out drinking and partying, aside from the tiara he rarely spends money on Amy, and he’s been employed from a young age with a decent salary. There’s no reason to believe Sheldon can’t afford a $15,000 tiara.
Sheldon very clearly has some source of money from something other than his job. In one of the episodes in Season 3 Howard finds multiple uncashed paychecks in a drawer and Sheldon merely waives it away, explaining that most of the things he wants haven’t been invented yet. The tiara very well could have been diamond and he just cashed a couple of those paychecks to buy it.
Although, to bolster the argument that the guys aren’t well off: in the very first episode we saw them reduced to selling their sperm. Can a guy who has to sell his emissions drop $15,000 on a bauble just eight years later? Eight years in which he apparently hasn’t achieved a promotion or tenure?
Don’t forget, everything in the store was on sale. A more important question is whether there was any gold on the tiara. I’m guessing not, because it didn’t seem to be very heavy.
I don’t buy diamonds on principle, but are diamonds every mixed with cheaper stones? I don’t mean emeralds or sapphires, I mean quartz, or other diamond-looking stones. So you might have one diamond as the centerpiece surrounded by quartz? If that’s a stupid question, please don’t waste time berating me; I don’t know anything about precious stones, and I won’t ever be buying any, so I don’t need to know.
You can get virtually anything. It’s common for jewelry to be encrusted with very tiny diamonds with little value, although jewelry is generally priced as if they were worth more. It’s unusual in my experience to see diamonds mixed with something totally valueless like quartz (glass), but one large diamond surrounded by tiny bits of diamond is common, and overpriced. I have saw blades with more diamonds on them than some jewelry I’ve seen. Affordable gold tiaras are usually made of very thin material with little gold by weight, or are gold plated.
IANA jeweler, but if you ask my wife she’ll tell you I know a thing or two about the subject.
Penny lives there, and the elevator hasn’t worked in years, the rent has to be at the low end of the range. His share of the rent is probably no more than $1000 a month. Sheldon has a doctorate, I’d assume he’s been making at least $60,000 a year bare minimum for a dozen years or more now, so he’s netting around $40,000 a year and he’s probably spending no more than $30,000 to live, so he’s probably got a nest egg of at least $100,000 by now. Since he’s demonstrated that he doesn’t care much about money, and he needed to smooth things over with Amy who he actually does love, care about, and depends on then $15,000 for a tiara is very sensible. Maybe I’m off on the numbers, but I think he’s probably doing better than that.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter, Amy’s reaction to the tiara is priceless, one of the best moments in the show. Others must agree with me because I only had “BBT Amy” typed in the search box when it filled in “tiara” for me.
When I looked for tiaras on ebay, there was one for more than $16,000, but then the prices dropped pretty quickly. Given that the prices of top-quality diamonds can easily be double or triple that of lower quality stones, and that the diamonds in a mall jewelry store tiara aren’t going to be as good as the solitaire in an engagement ring, it’s entirely possible Amy’s tiara was more in the $5K-$7K range. Not cheap, but not as much as Howard spends on some of his toys.
In an earlier scene, Penny and Sheldon are looking at jewelry worth about $750. I suspect that that’s closer to what one might expect someone in a middle-class job to spend if they wanted to apologize to their girlfriend. Here’s the scene:
In the episode where Sheldon loaned Penny that cash, he stated that he only uses half his net salary for living, toys, and entertainment expenses. He banks the rest. So, I submit he could afford $15K to buy Amy a tiara. But I doubt that he would spend that much. Maybe the one he bought had crystals, lesser gems, some diamond chips, and/or genuine cubic zirconias.
Leonard probably spent about $15K on the used car he bought for Penny, so I guess Sheldon could buy a diamond tiara.
