It is only a week until the start of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (aka the 2008 Olympics) and I’m sure that many of you will want to get into the spirit of things and commemorate the occasion. But how? It’s too late to train for a marathon, or even a fun run. Dressing up as one of the olympic mascots is right out in this heat and a five-ringed tattoo will only look all smeary when your non-athlete arm goes all bingo wings in later life.
Luckily, diamond merchant De Veres has stepped in with the ultimate Olympic expensive tat commemorative item - a diamond studded iPhone 3G, because nothing says “Citius, Altius, Fortius” like a blinged-up iPhone.
For a mere $8,219 (plus the cost of the handset which, hilariously, you have to pay for yourself) De Veres will embed 88 diamonds around the steel bezel of the iPhone. The number ‘8′ in China is associated with wealth. The number ‘80′ presumably means ‘less sense than’.
Oh come off it. Surely nobody is going to buy one of these are they? Don’t they know there is a recession on?
It’s no great shock that someone has produced a diamond-encrusted Nokia N95. After all, blinged-up mobiles have been a fixture on the market ever since some anonymous idiot dipped a handset into a tub of glitter sometime in the mid nineties. Indeed, there is already a bejewelled N95 on sale, albeit (slightly) more upmarket than this effort from Continental Mobiles.
Seriously, would would want this? It may well be “A smooth Sterling silver front panel encrusted with 4.42ct of brilliant-cut, VS1 quality, colour G-H, naturally mined diamonds, each hand-set and tailored by our craftspeople for your delight.” but to this untrained eye it looks like last year’s mobile involved in a glue-related altercation at Claire’s Accessories.
It’s the kind of spangly idiot magnet at which even the most vapid, conspicuously-consuming hanger-on to P Diddy or Paris Hilton might attempt to wrinkle their botoxed noses.
This “true statement of luxury and extravagance” (sic and, frankly, sick) can be yours for a mere TEN THOUSAND POUNDS, ladies and gentlemen.
That’s THIRTY THREE iPhone 3Gs and enough change for a bag of chips. Comparisons with the annual food budget of a typical single parent family will be left as an exercise for the reader.
Think the iPhone’s expensive? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Imagine how much you’d have to pay if it was lovingly covered in red-grain leather. £400? Higher! £600? More!
£900? Bingo! Yep, UK etailer Goldstriker has announced that it’ll be selling 250 limited-edition leather-backed iPhones for £900 apiece. If you’re a cockney, that’s two monkeys minus four ponies. The company has previously become known for flogging all manner of mobile handsets (iPhones included) with bling gold-plating, but it seems leather is the new thing.
Flogging iPhones as luxury-items with a huge markup? I can’t believe Steve Jobs didn’t think of it first…
Goldstriker website (via Electric Pig)
