Why resale value of wedding or engagment rings is…
Breakups are laborious — but this price tag may harm even more.
After splitting from her fiancée, Australian trainer Mia Pimentel figured she may at least money in on her engagement ring and transfer on.
Instead, she bought a actuality examine that hit tougher than heartbreak.
The couple bought engaged in 2021 after 5 years together, exchanging rings to seal the deal.
But when the connection fizzled two years later, they each held onto their sparkler — including Pimentel’s 1-carat diamond solitaire, initially value about US$ 6,500.
At first, the ring sat untouched — a glittering reminder of a chapter she was prepared to close.
Eventually, the Sydney resident determined to promote it, assuming it might fetch a first rate chunk of change.
That assumption didn’t last long.
“But when he told me how little I’d get for it, my jaw hit the floor,” Pimentel told Yahoo Lifestyle in a latest interview.
The verdict? Her once-$6,500 ring was now value a jaw-dropping $350 — a loss of roughly $6,150.
So what occurred to the glint?
An Australian trainer’s 1-carat, lab-grown diamond solitaire, initially value about $9,000, was appraised for resale at just $500, leaving her surprised and roughly $8,500 short of expectations. fizkes – stock.adobe.com
According to Sydney-based grasp jeweler Ernesto Buono, resale actuality is not often as shiny as the unique buy.
“Jewelers often pull the ring apart and redesign the ring, then they have to make their own profit. It’s a lot of labor, which is what you’re paying for,” Buono explained to the outlet.
In other phrases, that hefty price tag isn’t just about the diamond — it’s the design, craftsmanship and markup that don’t carry over once the ring hits the resale market.
And Pimentel’s ring had another strike against it: the stone was lab-grown.
Buono said advances in lab-grown diamonds have made them considerably cheaper to produce in latest years, driving resale values down fast.
Industry consultants be aware that lab-grown diamonds, now a growing share of engagement rings, don’t maintain value the way in which natural stones do — even as they win over consumers for their measurement and affordability. New Africa – stock.adobe.com
“For example, what was once $2,000 per carat might now be around $500,” he said. “That’s bringing the overall cost down of the diamonds itself, so it doesn’t retain the value as much as natural does.”
That tracks with earlier reporting by The Post.
As Mara Opperman, co-founder of Louped (previously I Do Now I Don’t), beforehand told The Post, lab-grown diamonds “don’t hold resale value the way natural stones do” — a tradeoff some {couples} settle for in exchange for measurement, affordability or ethics.
Opperman famous that many brides are now gravitating toward secondhand natural diamonds instead — drawn to their endurance and smaller environmental footprint.
She prefers pre-owned stones herself, saying they “come with a past, they’ve stood the test of time, and still hold up their value — both emotionally and financially.”
Unlike newly mined diamonds, she added, they don’t require “new mining or a new footprint.”
Rachelle Bergstein, creator of “Brilliance and Fire: A Biography of Diamonds,” also told The Post lab-grown diamonds entered the market in the early 2000s but only grew to become aggressive with mined stones in the 2010s as technology improved.
Since then, decrease costs and growing demand have helped them seize a sizable share of U.S. engagement rings — up from just a few % a decade in the past.
Still, it appears that when it comes to rings, greater — or newer — doesn’t always imply better, particularly once you attempt to promote.
Stay in the loop with the latest trending topics! Visit our web site daily for the freshest lifestyle news and content, thoughtfully curated to inspire and inform you.
