> 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?

Yes, 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.

There’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.

Honestly, 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?

Because the marketing goal of the diamond industry is to convince buyers that the amount of money you spent indicates how much you love your spouse.

Theoretically you could spend the same amount an some insanely huge used diamond.

"Used things are for poor people" - they know their market well and don't even have to actively diminish used diamonds/rings value, their customers do it for them.

Sustainability is a luxury belief. The market will change when such values disseminate more broadly.

But that doesn't dictate how much you're supposed to be paying for each individual diamond. If you have a "proof of love" budget of $6000 you could just buy five used diamonds instead. You could then start an arms race with other married couples and claim they don't love their spouses, because they only bought them a single diamond.

Edit: I checked and multi diamond cluster rings look way more impressive and make single diamond rings look cheap and icky.

The majority of people who understand that diamonds are a scam are not simultaneously attracted to diamonds.

How? 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.

It’s far more common for people to collaborate on purchases like this than to surprise each other: you could go so far to say that people choose diamonds for themselves.

It can feel like a bad luck kind of thing. Basically the only reason someone would have to sell their wedding rings are divorce or some other downturn. And don't want to invite bad luck by buying it.

Similar to not buying clothing from someone deceased or a wedding dress from someone divorced.

Can argue that this is not very rational. But much about the wedding process isn't :)

Just gotta market it right. Maybe section off by length of marriage and dissolved by death or divorce.

A 60 year marriage, ended by death of one spouse shouldn't be unlucky. Especially if it was actually the death of both spouses in some tragically romantical way.

You bought me a train wreck diamond???

Don't underestimate the power of superstition.

> Basically the only reason someone would have to sell their wedding rings are divorce or some other downturn.

That's why your shop should only sell the weddings rings from people who had a long and successful marriage and died peacefully in their sleep at age 95.

Haha, yes indeed. It'll be the free-range eggs equivalent for buying jewelry. Ethically farmed from happy wedded couples.

I don't think people who insist on diamonds care about how they are sourced. After all the blood diamond thing didn't stop anyone. What people want is to be skillfully lied to.

The blood diamond thing stopped a lot of people. I’d say it was the primary reason people pointed to when they passed on diamonds. Now almost all the diamonds you buy are expressed certified as conflict free.

My wife wears my great grandmother's ring. I thought that she would not be interested but was elated when I discussed the option. When I was talking about marriage with my parents my mom mentioned that she had a couple rings I would be welcome to, but then mentioned: "one is from a very long and happy marriage, that would probably be best, the other...".

They're sold as "estate jewelry".

There are lots on eBay, or at least there were some years back when I was in the market.

eBay is sketchy when it comes to this. I want to have someone verify it is what they say it is.

After you receive it, you can take it to a jeweler for confirmation. If it was falsely represented, eBay should back your return claim.

Yup got my wives ring from a pawnshop cheap

Using the plural of wife might be unintentionally adding context here.

If you're racking up wives, all the more reason to save money. Alternatively, I could imagine a new wife becoming quite upset upon learning that her engagement ring was from a pawn shop...possibly upset enough to leave!

I might sound like an asshole, but if she's upset enough to leave you over that you should let her go. I wouldn't want a wife like that, personally.

They shared the ring too! Maximum efficiency.

"One Ring to rule them all"

Phone autocorrected the missing apostrophe to a multiple instead

Yes and everybody should do it.

Even a used one will be priced pretty high. Paid 400 or so for a used one, then immediately took it to someone else to verify it's real...they offered 75 for it(I didn't ask, she just said how much she'll pay for it).

You can buy a second-hand synthetic diamond for even less!

Best thing I ever did was buy my (now X) wife's engagement ring off Craigslist.

My condolences regarding your divorce from Twitter.

I 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.

Wedding bands have some utility though as if you get a gold one, you’re always carrying a small amount of gold to barter with.

I 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.

Tell me you don't play poker without telling me you don't play poker?

The irony is pretty intense.

> tungsten ring

You do realise that in the (admittedly unlikely) event of that needing to be cut off, you won't stand a chance?

Nah, I checked with the local fire department before buying. They’ll apply directed force and fracture the ring to remove it in an emergency.

Example: https://youtu.be/eKxUYvKR-jw

The 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.

This 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.

Why don't more people buy diamond rings at pawn shops?

Because of the propaganda campaign from the foaming mfrs: “if you don’t spend a lot do you really love her? What signal are you sending?”

And add to that superstition - "what if this used ring came from a divorce?"

It'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/ho...

In almost all states, courts will order engagement rings to be returned if the marriage is canceled, and the giver wants it back.

This is likely a legend.

Thats exactly my point: the whole infrastructure of breach of promise, (somewhat) rarity of diamonds etc has been obsolete for decades, almost a century in the US. Any point of an expensive engagement ring has not had practical value in living memory. Just a residual, empty practice.

Every aspect of a wedding outside of the government paperwork is without practical value. It's almost like the practical value isn't the only thing that matters.

Another way of thinking about it is that a wedding itself is a public commitment you’re making in front of witnesses (so in theory harder to back out of — not a bad idea as it provides some hysteresis to overcome transient conflicts).

Meanwhile the government is simply providing some infrastructure as a service to people who want to make such commitments.

The practical value is from the expectation of permanence. This allows you to plan for scale.

Nitpick, 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.

Good point.

Jewelry 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.

Gold 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).

Gold, 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.

Depends what culture you’re in. Work gold jewelry gives you a lot of social cache in India so it is worn all the time. Additionally it’s used as a mode to transfer wealth across generations with jewelry giving mandated in the cultural milieu.

That's pretty much the point I made,

if you're part of a culture that values gold then gold has percieved value .. otherwise it's not especially useful

(in that other elements have similar properties and are cheaper to bulk source, with few applications that benefit uniquely from gold).

'Useful' being the pragmatic sense, food, shelter, clothing are neccesary, concrete and steel are useful, copper is useful, gold is (mainly) hoarded and shown off.

Gold is somehow universally adored by humans. It’s not just the Indians, different, unconnected civilizations throughout history have given it a vaunted status in their society completely independently. Hence it is pragmatically a good store of value because it taps into a universal, instinctual appreciation for it.

Copper is significantly more conductive than gold. Folklore holds a.myth that gold is really good, but basic physics disagrees.

It's not very significant (by most definitions of the word), a typical physics | engineering quote is:

    The electrical conductivity of copper is slightly higher at 5.96 x10^7 S/m than gold which is 4.11×10^7 S/m. More importantly is the lifespan of the two metals. Copper has a high oxidation level. So, if installed in an unstable environment (such as outside), it will fail sooner than gold.

They're close (which is how I misordered the two) with the corrosion Vs non corrosion of copper V. gold being a factor in switch contact lifespans - typically high copper alloys with lower oxidation rates are used.

It is significant enough that you would need a thicker wire for many applications. Gold's corrosive properties are often useful and it conducts well enough, though even then gold is used as much because of "gold" when something else cheaper would work good enough.

Gold-plated connectors don’t oxidize- which is a benefit over copper alone.

Gold does not corrode, and can be formed into thinner parts.

And as an added bonus, copper jewelry turns your skin green!

/s

Currently the US government holds 8,134 metric tons of gold in reserves. You can call it "hording" (whatever that means) but clearly someone thinks it's worth keeping half a trillion dollars worth of the country's money in it.

Sure...maybe...if you believe that gold is actually there and who knows if it is.

But either way, 1/2 a trillion is just 1/8th of the yearly federal budget. Not sure it is an amount that matters much to the government.

of course, pocket change, probably driven by lunatic sentiments from the centuries past.

> You can call it "hording" (whatever that means)

Isn't it "hoarding" (acquiring an excessive number of items and storing them in a chaotic manner)?

i would imagine the most powerful democracy in the world would have a better approach to structuring the reserves than "storing them in a chaotic manner"?

Being a good store of value, is itself - a value. It's not entirely arbitrary because you need quite a lot of characteristics to make it fit. It needs to be relatively widespread to encourage widespread acceptance of its value (rather than just granting Goldland a defacto king-maker style monopoly on wealth, which nobody beside allies of Goldland would recognize), relatively scarce so you're not requiring hundreds of tons of it to cover even a moderate national level transaction, it needs to be safe to handle, stable, solid at any practical temperature, and somehow relatively easy to verify the authenticity of. I can't really think any other element that fits the bill as nicely as gold.

Put another way, if we look at all the parallel realities of Earth, even prior to the discovery of gold, I suspect the overwhelming majority of them would end up using it as a major store of value. It's just really perfect for it! We may even find alien civilizations, assuming a comparable elemental distribution to Earth, doing the same!

The market for Cuban links can be significant.

That's a rather steep premium in my opinion and you'll also be penalized when you try to sell it, because small quantities, individual appraisal, and additional cost to the buyer if its fate is to be melted down and refined.

In exchange for all that, you get a physical object that can be lost, damaged, or stolen.

If you're going to invest in gold, it seems like a poor way to do it.

Jewelry can be an investment, or a way to save capital. Gold jewelry is pretty good for that, actually rare gemstones (as opposed to diamonds) can also be, silver is alright in this regard.

You can reuse the diamond and get a new ring.

Yeah. 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.

Rains diamonds on neptune?

I mean...maybe: https://www.space.com/diamond-rain-atmosphere-uranus-neptune

Seems 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-...

More snow, really.

Neither rain nor snow. Both don't form from pressure, and require some kind of particulate nucleus thing, which isn't water.

Closer to a mesospheric cloud?

Funny you should ask: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Lots more here! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38246406

Hahaha wow! That struck an HN nerve for sure, so many posts!

That'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.

No, 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.

It'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.

Always check the second hand market for any large purchase. What you can resell for is much closer to the true value of the asset.

Basically 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.

This 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

High quality ~6.5 mm new lab-grown diamond : $1.2k :

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://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....

(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/ )