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Living It Up Post-Mortem: Big Spender

Stock quotes in this article: HI , WMT , PEP  

BOSTON (TheStreet) -- The cost for the average funeral, including cemetery expenses, a memorial service and embalming fees, ranges from about $9,000 to $12,000. But the price of an extraordinary funeral costs considerably more, especially if it includes the Promethean Bronze, the top-of-the-line product from Batesville Casket, the biggest casket company in the world and a subsidiary of Hillenbrand(HI).

The final resting container for the likes of Michael Jackson and James Brown, the custom-made casket is crafted from 48-ounce polished bronze and hand-polished to a mirrored sheen for 100 hours, according to Paul Holzman, director of product management at Batesville. It sports a "continuously welded bottom," meaning the base has no seams, as well as 14-karat gold-plated handles. The lush velvet interior comes in four colors: dark green, Shasta lily, blue flame and spitfire red. The mattress is adjustable.

The Promethean Bronze casket retails for $25,000.

"It has always been the landmark casket in this industry for when only the best will do," Holzman says. Batesville declines to divulge the wholesale price of the Promethean Bronze. It retails for about $25,000 at funeral homes. (Prometheus, incidentally, was the Greek deity best-known for stealing fire from Zeus and giving it to humans. Zeus punished him by bounding him to a rock, where an eagle ate his liver, which regenerated itself every night so the eagle could eat it again the next day -- not exactly resting in peace.)

For those who would rather go the luxury-cremation route, there's LifeGem, an Elk Grove Village, Ill., company that creates diamonds from carbon extracted from a lock of hair or from cremated remains. The company is crafting a diamond from some of Michael Jackson's hair, salvaged on the day the late pop star's head caught fire while shooting a commercial for Pepsi(PEP) in 1984.

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