If you had £2.5k for an engagement ring…

[PartyPlan]

What would you choose?

My engagement ring has been sadly lost, but it is insured so I am hoping I can buy a replacement.

The style I had before was a princess cut with diamond shoulders, all very square but I loved it, although it probably isn’t what I would choose now. I love pear shaped stones, but someone close to me has one like that and I wouldn’t want to be seen as copying.

Would love some ideas if anyone has any! Would absolutely consider lab grown or vintage rings as I think you get more for the money.

@Itsbackagain I am all for treating yourself, I just lost my mum, and retail therapy is the only therapy I have time for right now.

Surely the insurance company will just pay what it will cost to put a new diamond in your existing ring?

They won't just give you £2.5k as the missing diamond won't be worth more than a couple of hundred?

I have a lab diamond that I chose because of the ethical side (and because it was cheaper!). Its completely indistinguishable from a mined diamond unless your a jeweller looking for the marking they give to distinguish it (because otherwise they are a threat to the price of mined diamond)

A lab diamond offered me the opportunity to have a much higher clarity, cut, colour etc then the equivilant mined thus my ring looks the better for it.

A lot of the argument comes that Lab diamonds don't hold value as well (simply because people know they are lab only due to the marking), which is somewhat true. But anyone who has ever tried to sell a mined diamond, return an engagement ring etc will know that the value of all of them absolutely plummets the second you leave the shop. My best friend was offered about 15% of what she bought the mined diamond ring for 12 months prior and was considered lucky. The worth is always sentimental mostly

It's the same durability as diamond which was a big factor for me, I love coloured gems but it needed to withstand me bashing it about. There's no reason you couldn't pass it down a line if you so wanted

I'm not massively anti mined diamonds but get frustrated at a lot of the false hoods. They are both chemically identical, they are both real things in their own right.

The equivilance of a fake rolex that gets bandied about is poor. Its not a fake anything, it's also identical in quality, and endurance. It's more like having a different brand of watch then a back market poorly made version of a brand.

You'll find a lot of the anti lab movement is encouraged by mined diamond stores saying women will be embarrassed to have them, their friends will judge them and only mined diamonds are romantic. Its exactly the same marketing that pushed diamonds into the industry in the first place and tried to make it the norm that you had to buy a diamond only, equivalent to 2 months wages other wise your fiance will be the laughing stock of the village and she would know you didn't really love her.

Discussions about the potential eco issues, and about resale value have some merit but the reality is a lot of it is nonsense.

I'll show you what an online mined diamond store says is the reason they don't stock them (note there aren't concerns about quality, durability or attractiveness!)

Ultimately some people have a gut reaction to the idea. The diamond market is invested in keeping prices high so a lot of the marketing is frankly bizarre

“They won't just give you £2.5k as the missing diamond won't be worth more than a couple of hundred?”

A couple of hundred for a diamond? It’s a £2500 ring, unless the setting is extremely detailed and the diamond is very very small you’re not going to get a replacement for a few hundred quid.

The thing is if you buy a lab diamond for any reason at all, most of which are good - it is obviously cheaper which is great - should you fall on hard times in your pensioner years and need a new boiler and don’t have ££ in the bank no one will want your lab created diamond. If you went to a jeweller and bought a second hand certificated natural diamond and negotiated a good deal OR bought at auction then in however many years time you will likely get back at least what you paid for it and worst case scenario, most of what you paid. Best case, a bit more but who knows. I wouldn’t bet on best case ever. You might as well put your money in to something that you can some of it back if you need it.

@Duntelchaig
Is that still the case?

My experience of selling family diamonds and those around me has them not coming back at any wear near their retail value. It used to be you'd get a guarantee the jeweler would buy it back, but I've not seen any recently.

Big diamonds I imagine retain some initial value buy regular ones don't in my experience

They won't just give you £2.5k as the missing diamond won't be worth more than a couple of hundred?

The cost of a diamond ring is predominantly the cost of a diamond or diamonds if its a 3 stone ring or cluster. If the ring cost for example £2500. I would expect the metal part of the ring to be around £500 and the £2k for the diamond(s) unless the ring was particularly chunky or very elaborate.

I have sold things via the dealer I bought them from to fund new purchases, rather than have her buy them off me and sell them on to make herself a profit but we have a good long-standing relationship. I’ve never made a huge loss on second hand jewellery luckily. And sometimes a profit but I don’t bank on it, it just feels like luck.

I will say that the odd friend has bragged to me that they bought a ring and are delighted that the Insurance value came back at a lot more so they know they got a great deal but insurance value obvious isn’t what you’d get at auction. If you know you have a 2ct sapphire ring with a certificate to prove it’s natural and a nice colour (popular - not only for example) in good condition, looking at auction prices should give an idea of the “true” value you can probably flog it at. Family jewellery is hard to value - some Victorian stuff is so out of fashion, the stones might not be good clarity by today’s standards, claws may need retipping, generally need professional cleaning and maybe it’s just not snap-up-abble.

I wouldn't bother getting one.

Lab diamond (or vintage) for ethical reasons and Welsh gold

I have a moissanite ring. I specifically didn't want a natural diamond and the moissanite is lovely and sparkly and was much more reasonsably priced, and you can't tell. It doesn't look cheap or garish.

It's a marquise solitaire and I absolutely love it. However, it took some getting used to - I was always scratching myself with it in the beginning and even now have to be careful helping the kids get dressed etc. I imagine a pear cut would be similar.

Insurance value is different though as its based on the price you bought it at and how much it would be to replace it rather than what you'd get if you'd sell it. In the same way I sold my car and they were selling it on for £3500 at the dealer, they'd only buy mine for 700 though .

This new ring at beaverbrooks for example is 2500, but the diamond valuation in it is £200 according to 2 sites. I've no doubt you could get more else where then a quick Internet site but in general the diamond its self does lose value in a standard ring currently

I think things change when it's a 1.5 ct+ and obviously there's more money to be had out there but I think the narrative of that a diamond ring will simply hold its value, shouldn't be relied upon

I've certainly had relatives assume their jewelry would pay for xyz and be suprised at the real valuation of it

wedonttalkabout - exactly. If anyone has an expectation of buying something, it had best be second hand and negotiated, IMO IF they ever might like any money back for it. If they don’t mind, then lab created is fine, paying huge amounts of VAT to get from Tiffany or Beaverbrooks is fine. How anyone wants to spend their £2.5k is up to them but if they are ever up shit creek in the future and want their engagement ring to fund solicitors’ fees, those are not the way to go. Doesn’t mean they can’t buy a ring they love though!

I don’t think I care that a lab diamond isn’t natural tbh. They look like exactly the same and are no different structurally, so to me it doesn’t matter that they are made in a lab. They are more ethical too.

I will update the thread when I know what the insurance company say. Hopefully they get in touch tomorrow. Will be interested to see if they want to repair it and how they will asses what the original diamond was worth vs the cost of the rest of the ring.

Go to the jewellery quarter in Birmingham

@Duntelchaig

The thing is if you buy a lab diamond for any reason at all, most of which are good - it is obviously cheaper which is great - should you fall on hard times in your pensioner years and need a new boiler and don’t have ££ in the bank no one will want your lab created diamond. If you went to a jeweller and bought a second hand certificated natural diamond and negotiated a good deal OR bought at auction then in however many years time you will likely get back at least what you paid for it and worst case scenario, most of what you paid. Best case, a bit more but who knows. I wouldn’t bet on best case ever. You might as well put your money in to something that you can some of it back if you need it.

I, for one, would absolutely not trade my mined diamond engagement ring for a new boiler. That’s a very good argument for lab diamonds, no temptation to part with a much loved piece of jewellery in hard times.

@Wedonttalkabout

Insurance value is different though as its based on the price you bought it at and how much it would be to replace it rather than what you'd get if you'd sell it. In the same way I sold my car and they were selling it on for £3500 at the dealer, they'd only buy mine for 700 though .

This new ring at beaverbrooks for example is 2500, but the diamond valuation in it is £200 according to 2 sites. I've no doubt you could get more else where then a quick Internet site but in general the diamond its self does lose value in a standard ring currently

I think things change when it's a 1.5 ct+ and obviously there's more money to be had out there but I think the narrative of that a diamond ring will simply hold its value, shouldn't be relied upon

I've certainly had relatives assume their jewelry would pay for xyz and be suprised at the real valuation of it

See all this shows is the poor value of a beaverbrooks ring

Mine was about £9k to make (designed and bought stones / settings separately from a designer) and has been valued at £32k for insurance. No way would we have spent that on a ring!

Insurance is the replacement valuation! The higher they value your ring the more you pay in premiums. If you take your ring to the person who made it and ask how much they would buy it off you for, it won’t be £32k. And given that of the £9k you paid them, £1,500 was VAT, you’d be doing beautifully to get £7.5k. But most people i assume including you know that! You don’t think you have a £32k ring at retail!

@Blossomtoes of course you wouldn’t and for all the right sentimental and lovely reasons. But if you needed to, you couldn’t anyway because it’s not worth anything on the resale market anyway. You’d have to sell something else! You’d still have a pretty ring but no Meissen or no Cotman painting…

I lost the diamond in my solitaire enagement ring, literally weeks before our 25th wedding anniversary. I was heartbroken, and the insurance basically meant we had to choose from their jeweller which turned out to be the modern day equivalent of Ratners..........

When my £3k ring arrived, it looked horribly cheap and nasty. I took it to an independent jeweller and paid for an insurance valuation which came back at £850. We argued for months with the insurance company but got nowhere.

So DH very kindly offered to let me choose another - this time we went to a local jeweller, and I've now got a beautiful eternity ring which I can wear with or without my wedding band.

@helpmeihaveatoddler

Lab diamonds are just synthetic rubbish!!

Like you could tell just by looking.

Just to add, I bought my DW ring from the states, you get a little bit more for your money than rip-off Britain.

[quote PartyPlan]@PathOfLeastResitance I don’t want to go too cheap though. My original ring was £2.5k and the diamond has fallen out and is lost. If I buy a cheap ring I would think the same thing might happen again.

Maybe I need to think about a yearly service and clean to check the settings.[/quote]
Why don't you get a diamond and have it (and the setting) replaced in the original ring? Then it keeps it the same for sentimental reasons. Any good jeweller that makes their own stuff can do this.

[quote Duntelchaig]@Blossomtoes of course you wouldn’t and for all the right sentimental and lovely reasons. But if you needed to, you couldn’t anyway because it’s not worth anything on the resale market anyway. You’d have to sell something else! You’d still have a pretty ring but no Meissen or no Cotman painting…[/quote]
I wouldn’t sell anything. If I had no savings and needed a new boiler I’d take out a loan like most people.

@Ariela while the ring is sentimental, it isn’t the style I like best now. This is an opportunity to pick a more classic style this time round. Completely depends on what the insurance wants to pay though