There is a photograph of Steve Wyn standing in front of the Bellagio fountains the night they opened in 1998. He is grinning. The water is dancing behind him in choreographed arcs against the Nevada sky. He looks like a man who has beaten the universe at its own game. And for a long time…
Hi, my name is Lucas and this is Chicago Mob Stories. I’ve been sitting on this story for 6 months because I wanted to make sure I got every detail right before sharing it with you because this man, this one man ran the most powerful criminal organization in America for four decades. He…
Imagine inheriting your mother’s favorite piece of jewelry and choosing never to wear it. Not out of neglect, but out of love so deep that you preserve it exactly as she left it, frozen in time. Imagine owning what experts value at up to 180 million and wearing it perhaps half a dozen times in…
Picture this. The most precious gemstones in British history. Rubies worn into battle. Sapphires from medieval saints. Diamonds the size of eggs wrapped in cotton wool, sealed in a glass jar, and buried 60 ft beneath Windsor Castle in an ordinary biscuit tin. For 6 years, they lay in the chalk earth while bombs…
She was a breath of fresh air, the Queen’s beloved daughter-in-law, who was even trusted with the Heirlooms of the Crown. Today, she is losing her home and her last sanctuary in the royal world. How did this catastrophe happen? The story of her jewels—from a fiery ruby to stolen diamonds—will tell us everything about…
She was a great collector: Queen Mary’s taste and her ability to work with jewels and master craftsmen shaped the face of the British jewel box for a century. Many of her pieces are still alive today—we recognize them in portraits and at modern state events. But what about those that were sold, dismantled, or…
In 2014, the death of the ninety-nine-year-old Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe, led her heir to a London vault and a discovery that felt frozen in time. There, tucked away in massive oak chests, he found a treasure trove of jewelry, all curiously wrapped in newspapers from a single, turbulent year: 1953. Why had these…
On the 5th of December 2023, inside Sabbee’s New York sales room on York Avenue, a small diamond and pearl cross was suspended beneath a focused beam of white light. Set in silver topped gold, each diamond caught that beam and fractured it, not with the theatrical blaze of a crown jewel, but with…
Los Angeles, 1973. Television specials in the early 1970s occupied a particular space in the entertainment landscape that no longer exists in quite the same way. an occasion, a genuine event, something that people arranged their evenings around because the medium was still young enough that certain combinations of performers on a single stage felt…
July 14th, 1960. Elvis Presley walked into a small neighborhood barber shop in downtown Memphis, wearing sunglasses and a hat, hoping for an hour of anonymity. What he heard in that chair from a barber who had no idea who he was cutting would stay with him for the rest of his life. And what…
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