Well, it quickly sounded fishy as soon as I read as far as volcano -- I thought you were about to suggest he throw her in as a sacrifice.

Once upon a time it was cheaper to purchase the gem and have it set -- but, like I said, that was long ago (and probably in galaxy far, far away). A couple decades past, when I had a little money to my name, I invested in a gem collection, one or so at a time. Mind you, these were not real expensive, small emeralds, citrines, opals, sapphires (never purchased the DeBeers diamond I was offered)... however, together, they added up to a noticeable sum; they were stolen along with my Camaro (which I retrieved from Massachusetts, ransacked and worse for wear), and video equipment. My dad never insured anything, my mom only got life and health insurance; I'm the only one in the family to have added on auto insurance. I also employed a plan that added my mom's car onto the policy for that Camaro. Not going into further detail, my mom got the insurance cancelled on both cars "because it [wasn't] necessary."  Neither Camaro nor gems were insured. Steve, if you got something of value and you can afford to insure it (yeah, I know, some might say if you can't afford to insure it, don't have it)...