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Jewelry Lovers

Between news of Callista Gingrich's $500,000 credit line at Tiffany & Co. and Kim Kardashian's impressive engagement ring, it's been a big week for celebrity jewelry. From Elizabeth Taylor to Jennifer Lopez, see who are the most famous fans of precious hardware.

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On May 17, Politico broke the news that self-declared fiscally responsible GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich owed as much as $500,000 to Tiffany's in 2005 and 2006, according to wife Callista's financial disclosures. Callista, who was employed by the House Agriculture Committee at the time, listed her husband's "revolving charge" on her financial forms. Gingrich's spokesman refuses to say whether Gingrich still has a running charge with the famous jewelry house. Just last month, his wife was seen wearing a particularly sparkly strand of diamonds to a screening of the couple's latest documentary. It looked remarkably like a Tiffany's necklace that sells for $45,000.

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Kim Kardashian has always had a taste for the finer things in life, particularly when it comes to jewelry. "In high school I went to Macy's and bought this fake ring, my 'perfect' ring, and this is almost the exact same," she told People magazine while flashing her 20.5-carat engagement ring. New Jersey Nets forward Kris Humphries popped the question to the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star on Monday. Though the couple have only been dating for six months, they both apparently are ready to take their relationship to the next level. Humphries dropped a reported $2 million on the custom-designed Lorraine Schwartz diamond ring, which features a 16.5-carat, emerald-cut center stone surrounded by two 2-carat trapezoids.

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The late Elizabeth Taylor's fine jewelry collection is almost as famous as the actress herself. Taylor even had a diamond named after her (and husband Richard Burton), a gargantuan pear-shaped stone that was the world's first $1 million rare diamond. Taylor was particularly fond of the rock candy strung together by French jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels, and was often photographed wearing their whimsical creations. She and Burton would call Van Cleef from their conjugal bed and request pieces to be made for them. Taylor's collection is reportedly valued at a whopping $150 million.

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Actress Ellen Barkin got many expensive souvenirs from her ex-husband, billionaire businessman Ron Perelman. Though he left her abruptly five years after they wed, Barkin made sure she reaped the benefits from their time together with a Christie's auction that earned her a whopping $20 million in 2006, E! Online reported. She put 103 items on the block, including rubies, sapphires, and pearls from Tiffany & Co., Van Cleef & Arpels, and designer Joel Arthur Rosenthal; the sale exceeded expectations and made history. Barkin's auction marked "the highest single-owner jewelry sale of the past 15 years in the U.S. and also places it among the top four ever worldwide," Rahul Kdakia, head of Christie's jewelry department, told E! "This wasn't such a bad deal for both of them," Cindy Adams told New York magazine. "He got a Hollywood name, and she got a lot of great jewelry."

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American heiress Sunny von Bulow was among the idle rich. As a friend once told New York magazine, the young Sunny was "being kept as a pet, not being encouraged to do anything except buy jewelry." And apparently, she chose her jewelry more carefully than she chose her men. Her second husband, Claus von Bulow, was convicted and later acquitted of twice trying to kill her by injecting her with insulin to aggravate her low-blood-sugar condition. Her saga was sensationalized throughout the 1980s, and in the middle of her husband's second trial, while she was in a coma, 79 pieces of von Bulow's legendary jewelry collection were auctioned off and sold for $2.5 million in 1985.

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A very public cheating scandal with golf pro-turned-sex addict Tiger Woods caused his former wife, Elin Nordegren, to turn up her nose at the jewels she received from her husband. The National Enquirer reported that Nordegren had Sotheby's auction off all of her baubles—which were estimated to be worth $2.5 million. An insider told the tabloid that selling the bling Tiger gifted her was Elin's "ultimate act of revenge."

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This Slovenian model-turned-American socialite is Donald Trump's third wife. And though it was The Donald's first wife, Ivana, who said, " Don't get mad; get everything," wife No. 3 didn't seem to miss out. Trump and Melania had a lavish wedding in 2005 after he put a 12-carat flawless diamond on her finger from Graff Jewelers, which People magazine reported is valued at $1 million. Surely he has continued to give her only the most exquisite jewelry since, but Melania has attempted to give the worst taste of the good life by hawking her own line of jewelry on QVC. "Now women everywhere can add a touch of luxury to their everyday lifestyle!" she told People magazine.

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Wallis Simpson not only persuaded a man to give up the crown, but she got some gorgeous jewelry in the process. Simpson became the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales, who ascended the throne as King Edward VIII. But when the Church of England refused to marry the new king and two-time divorcee Simpson, he decided to abdicate less than a year after his ascension, in order to make Wallis his wife. The bride and groom became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and he was notorious for showering her with jewels, engraved with personal messages, that had all of London abuzz. "He had great style, and until the end of his life loved discussing and designing jewelry with the duchess," the countess of Romanones of Spain told The New York Times. The duke worked closely with Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Harry Winston, to design the pieces, which included a 206.82-carat sapphire pendant and a 48.95-carat emerald pendant. In 1987, one year after the Duchess of Windsor's death, Sotheby's of London sold over 300 lots of her much ogled jewels, totaling $71.7 million, which remains the world record for an auction of a single-owner jewelry collection. Then, in Nov. 2010, Sotheby's auctioned more jewelry, fetching $12.5 million, more than twice the amount the sale was estimated to reach. "She was never covered in jewels,'' Diana Vreeland, former editor in chief of Vogue, told The Times of the duchess. ''Like all women who possess great things, she was actually terribly modest.''

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The only thing Mouna Ayoub, the French socialist and former wife of Saudi Arabian businessman Nasser Al-Rashid, loves more than jewelry is the ocean, apparently. After her divorce, Ayoub decided to buy a yacht and do €18.25 million ($26 million) worth of work on it. But in order to pay for said boat, she needed to sell some of her beloved jewels, which included a 15.3 million-franc Bulgari necklace and one of the world's largest yellow diamonds. The Mouna diamond, which weighs in at a whopping 112.53 carats, went for a record-setting $3.2 million to an anonymous Middle East collector at a Christie's auction in Geneva. "We put it next to the Tiffany: not only is it a few carats bigger-looking, the color was also noticeably better," gemologist Michael Hing said. "It was set in a Bulgari pendant: extremely good-quality jewelry work."

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Much like her rags-to-riches characters, Joan Crawford was the small-town daughter of a laundry laborer who became a legendary screen siren. After she was under contract with MGM for 18 years, the studio bought her out for $100,000 and she signed an unprecedented deal with Warner Bros. for $500,000. Clearly, Texas-born Crawford had money to spend and she did so at the legendary Raymond C. Yard. Her most expensive purchase was a 75-carat amethyst ring, but Crawford was also known for her 70-carat sapphire engagement ring from her second of four husbands, Franchot Tone. She loved sapphires so much, in fact, that jewelers began referring to the gem's color as "Joan Blue."

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At the height of her singing career, Jennifer Lopez crooned about love not costin' a thing, and told her fans not to be fooled by the rocks that she's got. Still, the girl from the Bronx seemed to have a taste for the finer things. In 2003, Lopez's then-boyfriend, Ben Affleck, gave her a $1.2 million pink 6.1-carat Harry Winston diamond when he asked for her hand in marriage. But the couple never made it down the aisle. And that diamond just scratched the surface for Lopez, whose current husband, Marc Anthony, proposed with an 8.2-carat ring. And Lopez's love of diamonds doesn't stop at engagement rings—at this year's Golden Globes, the American Idol judge made headlines for dripping in $5 million worth of Harry Winston diamonds, and recently revealed her campaign as the new face of Tous jewelry.

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As Frank Woolworth's granddaughter, Barbara Hutton inherited the modern equivalent of a third of a billion dollars at just 7 years old, becoming the richest girl in the world. Dubbed the "Poor Little Rich Girl," she went on to spend money without blinking. According to ThisIsMoney.uk.com, Hutton spent the equivalent of £10 million ($16 million) on a suite of jewels once belonging to Napoleon. The heiress also allegedly treated high-end jewelers "like other people treated her grandfather's five-and-dime stores—she'd drop in and help herself to whatever took her fancy." Among her prized shiny possessions were the 40-carat Pasha of Egypt diamond, a pearl necklace that belonged to Anne of Austria and then Queen Marie Antoinette, and a $1.2 million collection of emeralds that had been owned by Catherine the Great and Edith Rockefeller McCormick, which she turned into a tiara that could also be worn as a necklace.

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Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has a pin for every momentous occasion she helped usher in while in the Clinton administration. Albright wore her many famous brooches to convey messages or moods throughout her political tenure. She even wrote a book about her emblematic bling, Read My Pins, which was published in 2009, along with an accompanying exhibition at New York's Museum of Arts and Design of 200 pins from Albright's extensive collection.

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