NICK EICHER, HOST: This coronavirus era is the mask-makers’ moment.
The market is booming.
The most-expensive mask you can find is a durable N-99 mask and that’s going to set you back about $90.
But a Chinese businessman based in the United States wanted something a lot different.
So he commissioned a jeweler in Israel to design a coronavirus mask for him.
Three simple instructions:
One, it had to be fitted with the top-rated N99 filter.
Two, it had to be completed by the end of the year.
And three, it had to be by far the most expensive mask in the world.
That last request the jeweler said was the easy part.
The mask is made of 18-karat gold to be decorated with 3,600 white and black diamonds.
Total cost? $1.5 million.
Good thing the buyer doesn’t demand the mask to be comfortable. It’ll weigh more than a 100 times that of a normal mask.
It’s The World and Everything in It.
(AP Photo/ Sebastian Scheiner) Parts and a model of a mask are displayed by the Israeli jewelry company Yvel in Motza near Jerusalem, August 9, 2020.
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