AIBU engagement ring

[Googlewasmyidea1]

I split with my ex in November last year after 15 years together, engaged for 8, he's now demanding the engagement ring back after initially telling me to sell it. I told him despite what he paid, £3k, it won't be worth anywhere near that, in fact the highest valuation I've had was £500 which I told him. He thinks I'm lying and has asked for the ring or £3k and will not let up. I don't think I should have to return the ring or pay him any money but AIBU?

Has anyone mentioned Judge Judy yet?

After all that time (even if it wasnt) tell him to get stuffed!

HNRTT so don't know who gave you the best valuation but IME if you want to maximise your return then sell it to a consumer yourself, OP. If that is impracticable and you are close to Birmingham or London, I'd pop along to a trade jeweller in the Jewellery Quarter or Hatton Garden as this would usually give you a better price for scrap or second hand than a high street jeweller who will factor in their higher mark up for retail or sell on for scrap. Good luck.

@Wrotten

Has anyone mentioned Judge Judy yet?

Hmm, not sure 🤔

@Zilla1

HNRTT so don't know who gave you the best valuation but IME if you want to maximise your return then sell it to a consumer yourself, OP. If that is impracticable and you are close to Birmingham or London, I'd pop along to a trade jeweller in the Jewellery Quarter or Hatton Garden as this would usually give you a better price for scrap or second hand than a high street jeweller who will factor in their higher mark up for retail or sell on for scrap. Good luck.

Thank you 😊

Thanks again for your advice, I'm going to ask mnhq to pull this now, don't want it ending up in the daily fail.

Thanks again

Not sure why you want to keep it OP. I gave my engagement ring to one of my daughters simply because she liked the ring - I had no intention of wearing it once her father and I split nor to sell it for a pittance.

If your ring were a family heirloom and you'd been engaged six weeks, I'd say give it back. But eight years and children?!

Nah. It's yours.

She wants to sell it as the ex doesn't pay child support. Seems pretty sensible.

@sunshinesupermum

Not sure why you want to keep it OP. I gave my engagement ring to one of my daughters simply because she liked the ring - I had no intention of wearing it once her father and I split nor to sell it for a pittance.

I'm not keeping it, I'm going to sell and put the money in the kids accounts

I would give him it and have a good laugh to myself at the fact he was so determined he would get 3k and he will get nowhere near that.

My engagement ring was 1400. Out of curiosity I went into a couple of places to see how much I could get for it, the highest offer was 200 quid lol. It was bought about a year before that.

engagement rings are like new cars in terms of depreciation.

Unless you're talking Liz Taylor style engagement rings.

@Googlewasmyidea1

And because he's just doing it out of spite and I just don't want to bend to his will. It's a long line of sticks he's using to beat me with and I want to win, just once

I think you'll "win" if you return it to him.

He sounds petty, immature and bitter. Yes if it wasn't the ring it would be something else but by giving him the ring back closes that particular argument. Selling it and putting it in the kids savings account will prolong it.

Have as little to do with him as you can once it's returned. Good luck OP!

@Iminaglasscaseofemotion, sorry to hear that but am not surprised. The worse I saw was a professional colleague who together with her DP had spent North of £25k on a named designer (not a jewellery designer) ring which had an actual second hand value of about £300. I think the designer's name added to the price inflation from the notional value of the stone.

The insurance value misleads most consumers in the UK. IME and the wording is clumsy but I find cultures that concentrate on gold purchases as a repository of wealth for wedding gifts (I know this is different to an engagement ring) lose less as the value is linked to the commodity price of the (usually) gold without the inflated notional value of the stone, let alone a designer name.

So basically gold never loses its value, whereas you have to really know your gemstones to buy a diamond that will retain its value?

@thefirstmrsrochester

Sell it for £500, spend the £500 on your dc, and tell him to get fucked.

Yes this!

@Classica, in effect but it's perhaps a little more complicated. Gold/platinum (silver too I suppose) might lose some of it's value if you buy when the market is high and sell when lower but gold at least has a demonstrable link to a validated market price. Also, if you are buying gold within jewellery then there might be VAT in the UK (depending on whether it is bullion or new or second hand jewellery and in the past, the VAT treatment of second hand jewellery used to depend on how the jewellery treats the metal for accounting purposes) and the jeweller's mark up so even a solid gold ring might not be worth close to what someone pays for it. There is some element of labour in precious metal jewellery pricing though much jewellery not hand-made by a designer is either machine made or made by sweatshops or worse in Thailand/South East Asia.

You are right that you need to understand your stones and in practice, there is almost always a massive disconnect between a stone's price and true resale value which is where most value is lost in engagement rings, I suspect.

There are ways of buying an engagement ring worth the money or close to but this won't involve buying new from a High Street jewellers. Engagement and wedding rings would tend to be exceptionally profitable.

I'm not always a heartless unromantic, many people pick a ring, buy it, love it and have no interest in selling it, just passing it on to DDs or family. It's just that I've seen so many people deceived by an insurance valuation that is 'even more than we paid' but when they come to sell it they are sad that it bears no relation to the actual value of the ring.

That is interesting, @Zilla1. I suppose people buy engagement rings when they're walking around in a joyous romantic haze and therefore many people don't tend to focus on the nitty gritty of the stone. It's all about aesthetics, and the experience in the shop, which I get. It is interesting though that buying a diamond ring, which for most people is one the most expensive purchases they'll ever make, isn't researched as much as when they're buying a car and will do a ton of research for weeks or months.

I don't think you sound heartless at all. Obviously if someone happily wears the ring for the rest of their days it doesn't matter so much but when you consider how many people split up and are then discover the true value of their engagement ring it does make you think that people are...not conned so much, but that they're not fully furnished with all the facts.

@MrsTerryPratchett

Go halfsies. If he's convinced it's worth 3k, he should therefore give you 1.5k and you will gladly return it to him.

Watch him magically understand jewelry mark up in a heartbeat.

Wanker.

This! Do this!

Regardless of the legalities, I think it's rather tacky to break the engagement but keep the ring!

According to judge Judy (from the many, many episodes i have seen), an engagement ring is part of a contract to be married. So technically if there is no marriage the ring goes back. However, in such a case where the engagement was years ago, it is acceptable to keep the ring as the relationship continued like a marriage. Just saying.

If you bought a ring at auction and your budget was 3k you would get a great ring. And the resale value in 8 years would be probably about the same, if not more.

@Classica I agree though I think it's worse than just the joyous romantic haze. I think there is conditioning to discourage bargaining or even asking questions to avoid appearing a cheapskate to your beloved. There's some really interesting marketing history around how De Beers built up the market for diamond engagement rings through advertising, Oscar winners wearing loaned jewellery, supporting songs/theatre shows and films like Bond with 'Diamonds are Forever' and Monroe? with 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend', advertising in the glossy magazines to build the notion that the ring should be a month's then three month's salary and so on.

You could argue consumers are conned everywhere but I think the % con in engagement and wedding rings (the mark up on the matching wedding ring is usually higher than the equivalent plain band) seems higher than most.

I’d return a family heirloom, but as you know the purchase price it surely wasn’t. I’d keep it.