Look: Marcoses’ ‘ill-gotten’ jewels and how these could have helped Filipinos

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — The jewels recovered from the family of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos are costly enough to finance the four-year college education of about 2,000 students, provide electricity to over 2,000 households and fund for the treatment of over 12,000 tuberculosis patients – to name a few.

These were revealed by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) in an online exhibit of selected pieces of the Hawaii jewelry collection, so-called because it consists of precious stones and jewels seized by U.S. Customs when the Marcoses fled to Hawaii after being ousted in the 1986 People Power Revolution.

The priced Hawaii collection is just one of three collections hoarded by the Marcoses, which were all together valued to be at least P1 billion in the most recent appraisal by auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

Related: Rare, 25-carat pink diamond found among Imelda Marcos collection – Christie's

PCGG’s Virtual Jewelry Exhibit, dubbed A Story of Excesses: What could have fueled a nation’s development, aims “to show and remind the present generation of the excesses and extravagance of the Marcoses in their two-decade dictatorship.”

Also read: Timeline: Jewels, properties, and billions of Marcos ill-gotten wealth

While it does not state the jewels’ exact amounts, the exhibit reveals how the jewels’ worth could have funded basic services for Filipinos.

“Along with descriptions of the ill-gotten gems, the PCGG also used U.S. dollar to peso exchange rate to show the equivalent values of these precious stones vis-à-vis what it could have financed in terms of education, health, agrarian reform, alleviation of poverty and other pertinent development programs of the government,” the PCGG said in its website.

Take a look at the jewelry sets embellished with pearls, gems and diamonds – and see how they could have contributed to Philippine society in this gallery.