Eagar engagement ring iridium acquisition (Engelhard / Bob Rose)

In the old days, when I made my wife's wedding ring, I used palladium because I couldn't afford all the gold — palladium was cheaper than gold. I was actually using platinum for her engagement ring. But I ran out of iridium — it's a long story. I had to lie to Engelhard to get the iridium. There's only about 100 ounces a year of iridium mined in the world, and I only wanted half an ounce. They wouldn't sell it to me. I had to go to my thesis advisor — I was working on superconductivity, niobium-three aluminum, but there was a niobium-three iridium alloy. I got him to sign a note to Engelhard saying we were going to use this for scientific research, and so I got my half ounce of iridium. I made the engagement ring. A year later, Engelhard sent two people by Bob Rose's office to find out how the research went. He didn't tell them we already had a son — he just made something up. But I had to get permission to buy half an ounce of iridium, which I thought was kind of silly. So I ended up making the wedding ring out of palladium because we had some lying around the lab.