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Has anyone ever tried to sell an engagement or wedding ring with diamonds? You get cents on the dollar. Even or I should say especially brand names like Tiffa
by jamiek88 3y ago
Has anyone ever tried to sell an engagement or wedding ring with diamonds?
You get cents on the dollar. Even or I should say especially brand names like Tiffany.
The whole thing is a scam from start to finish and I wish I could go back in time and avoid the entire thing.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoI bought my partner's diamond and wedding ring set before we were hip to the shenanigans around diamonds. We had the ring melted down to make a pendant for our child with the diamond (which they'll receive when they're an adult) and no longer wear wedding rings (mine was a ~$20 tungsten ring from Amazon luckily). Thousands of dollars wasted in hindsight. Hot take: Diamonds are scams, don't buy them! Take a trip, buy a house, start an investment account instead.
- koolba 3y agoWedding bands have some utility though as if you get a gold one, you’re always carrying a small amount of gold to barter with.
- SamBam 3y agoI feel like if you're in a situation where you're reduced to bartering with someone with your gold wedding ring, chances are reasonably high that you're also in a situation where you don't get a say in whether they take your gold wedding ring.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- droopyEyelids 3y agoTell me you don't play poker without telling me you don't play poker?
- c0pium 3y agoThe irony is pretty intense.
- LemmyInThePub 3y ago> tungsten ring You do realise that in the (admittedly unlikely) event of that needing to be cut off, you won't stand a chance?
- toomuchtodo 3y agoNah, I checked with the local fire department before buying. They’ll apply directed force and fracture the ring to remove it in an emergency. A friend is an electrical lineman, so digit safety is top of mind. Example: https://youtu.be/eKxUYvKR-jw https://youtu.be/eKxUYvKR-jw
- Julesman 3y agoYeah. I'm glad I figured this one out before getting married. They have no real value. They do look nice and are great for grinding metal. But they aren't rare. The value has always been completely managed. And the notion that you spend a lot on a ring is so insidious. It rains diamonds on Neptune.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoRains diamonds on neptune?
- chemicalnovae 3y agoI mean...maybe: https://www.space.com/diamond-rain-atmosphere-uranus-neptune https://www.space.com/diamond-rain-atmosphere-uranus-neptune
- adolph 3y agoSeems like a reasonable conjecture that stretches the meaning of the word rain. Naomi Rowe-Gurney: So I mentioned methane being the reason why these two planets are blue. Well, methane has carbon in it and that carbon can occur by itself and also be crushed by the immense pressures that happen, like, deep in the atmosphere, so much deeper than the levels that I look at. And inside the planet, when it gets really hot and really dense, these, these diamonds form and accumulate, and then they become even heavier. And that means that they kind of rain down in the atmosphere. But it’s not the rain that we see here because these pressures are extreme, and you’ll never be able to get there as a human. So even if these diamonds do exist, we would never be able to go and grab them. So… unfortunately. https://www.nasa.gov/podcasts/gravity-assist/gravity-assist-its-raining-diamonds-on-these-planets/ https://www.nasa.gov/podcasts/gravity-assist/gravity-assist-...
- gumby 3y agoMore snow, really.
- 3y ago
- User23 3y agoJewelry isn’t an investment, it’s conspicuous consumption. That said there’s really no reason to buy new unless it’s a custom made piece.
- huytersd 3y agoGold jewelry is very easily an investment. The artisan work on them only increases the cost by 10-15% on the underlying value of the gold (at least in India).
- busterarm 3y agoThe market for Cuban links can be significant.
- defrost 3y agoGold, just gold, is an investment simply because people value it - it's a shiny noble metal that stays "pure", ergo percieved value. From a resource utility PoV it costs more to source than copper or aluminium which are nearly as conductive - so they win out for electronic and power transmision applications. There are applications where gold is the clear winner - "forever" circuits and switches that are worth the extra cost to have contacts that never corrode, space tech, etc. But the reality is that the vast vast majority of gold mined gets turned into bullion and horded (my precious!!) or played with a little and worn as jewellry. I've been in and around the gold mining industry for decades, I'm not a hater - but it's easily one of the most valuable useless things we spend vast amounts of energy on gathering.
- gumby 3y agoThe origin of diamond engagement rings was insurance: with the decline of "breach of promise" suits, the fiancée at least had something to sell as a settlement if the fiancé reneged on the promise of marriage. All of that nonsense is long gone; the fetish for engagement rings is just a residual and empty metaphor. Good riddance. My US gf was astonished and dubious that my relatives (in various other countries) didn't have diamond engagement rings, or engagement rings at all.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoNitpick, not diamond engagement rings. It was valuable engagement rings, it didn't have to be diamonds. The PR men created the diamond specific thing, and gutted the entire meaning of the tradition.
- gumby 3y agoGood point.
- defrost 3y agoIt's easy to fall prey to advertising: How an Ad Campaign Invented the Diamond Engagement Ring In the 1930s, few Americans proposed with the precious stone. Then everything changed. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
- vel0city 3y agoThis was really never true though. Second hand diamonds have been incredibly cheap compared to retail for a long time. Good luck reselling that engagement ring, the pawn shop has a box overflowing with them.
- pauldenton 3y agoWhy don't more people buy diamond rings at pawn shops?
- SenAnder 3y ago> Has anyone ever tried to sell an engagement or wedding ring with diamonds? You get cents on the dollar. Does that mean you can buy one second-hand at a low price, and avoid the inflated market entirely?
- sen 3y agoYes, we got used 1920s (or 40s, I forget which) diamond matching (engagement/wedding) rings from a local jewellery market for ~5% of the cost of the equivalent spec ring if it were new. It was in immaculate condition and my wife adores them still 15 years later.
- Tiffanyzed 3y ago[dead]
- huytersd 3y agoThere’s specifically no market for them somehow. I tried to look but the only places I could found that sold them was at pawn shops.
- Loughla 3y agoHonestly, second hand diamond and other gemstone jewelry seems like such a missed opportunity. I feel like people would go for it, with the new focus on sustainability and what-not. I wonder why that's not a thing?
- subpixel 3y agoThe majority of people who understand that diamonds are a scam are not simultaneously attracted to diamonds.
- selcuka 3y agoHow? You don't usually buy diamonds for yourself, so the person who understands the diamonds are a scam does not have to be the same person who is attracted to diamonds.
- psyclobe 3y agoBest thing I ever did was buy my (now X) wife's engagement ring off Craigslist.
- kibwen 3y agoMy condolences regarding your divorce from Twitter.
- dang 3y agoFunny you should ask: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22sell%20a%20diamond%22&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Lots more here! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38246406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38246406
- jamiek88 3y agoHahaha wow! That struck an HN nerve for sure, so many posts!
- renegade-otter 3y agoThat's the whole idea. There is no secondary market for diamonds - it's not a scarce resource. Scarcity is completely artificial, combined with decades of marketing campaigns. "Diamonds are forever". Yeah, they are - because once you buy it, you can't really sell it to break even, let alone make a profit. Gold has natural market price fluctuations at least.
- philwelch 3y agoNo, there has to be a secondary market somewhere because professional diamond theft is a thing. So they have to be able to fence the diamonds somewhere. And this isn't a small time thing, either; there have been a few diamond heists in the past couple of decades in the tens of millions of dollars/pounds/euros each, involving serious professional criminals.
- theshrike79 3y agoIt's because diamonds are mostly untraceable. If you steal it, nobody can tell if a diamond sold 2 years ago was at one point stolen or not. But actual diamond jewellery is mostly priced like artwork. The worth of the actual separate components has very little to do with the price of the item.
- globular-toast 3y agoAlways check the second hand market for any large purchase. What you can resell for is much closer to the true value of the asset.
- ozim 3y agoBasically all jewelry is a scam if you look at it as an investment. From people that I observed over the years I saw people who had low self esteem mostly that would pull up with loads of jewelry. There are also people who like it as small accents but I don't think they do it because it is worth something but more like they just like it and that's fine.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoThis seems to be more of an issue with rings than diamonds though ? Unknown quality ~6.5 mm second-hand lab-grown diamond : $0.8k : https://louped.com/lab-grown-diamond114927.html https://louped.com/lab-grown-diamond114927.html High quality ~6.5 mm new lab-grown diamond : $1.2k : https://www.whiteflash.com/loose-diamonds/lab-created-diamonds/round-cut?carat=0.9,1.1&clarity=IF,SI2&cut=Ideal,Excellent&t=inhouse&advanced=yes&polish=Ideal,Excellent&lwratio=0,3&symmetry=Ideal,Excellent https://www.whiteflash.com/loose-diamonds/lab-created-diamon... ---- Crappy ~6.4 mm second-hand natural diamond : $3k : https://louped.com/gia-certified-round-diamond-114841.html https://louped.com/gia-certified-round-diamond-114841.html https://www.freediamondreport.com/report/lab/GIA/cert/5456398615 https://www.freediamondreport.com/report/lab/GIA/cert/545639... High quality ~6.5 mm new natural diamond : $3.5k-3.9k : https://www.whiteflash.com/loose-diamonds/round-cut?carat=0.9,1.1&color=D,L&t=inhouse&advanced=yes&polish=Ideal,Excellent&lwratio=0,3&symmetry=Ideal,Excellent https://www.whiteflash.com/loose-diamonds/round-cut?carat=0.... (Clarity doesn't seem to matter that much, because it has not much effect as long as it can't be seen to the naked eye, which in these except the worst one it probably won't be ? https://beyond4cs.com/clarity/ https://beyond4cs.com/clarity/ )