Learn Me: Real diamond engagement rings - plan included

As usual, when faced with a difficult question I've learned it is best to turn to the Brain-trust before making any final decisions. As an added bonus, by posting here I can keep myself anonymous and the proposal a surprise. GRM is the first to know of this plan, no one else knows I am thinking of popping the question. It won't happen anytime soon, but I would like to start aligning the ducks so it can happen in 6-12 months.

First issue at hand, the ring. I have yet to talk to her friends to see what she would like, so right now I just want to throw out my idea and see what you guys think. Diamond prices are absolutely ridiculous. Really have no idea what to spend, but in my mind spending anything over $3k seems silly. If I talk to her friends/sister/etc and find out she really wants something more expensive, I will consider it but I honestly think I can find a deal to make this cheaper and better than anything else out there for much more money.

My plan is this, buy a ring off eBay or craiglist, like the one linked below. IF the guy isn't lying about the ring, and I would have it separately appraised before exchanging cash, that diamond would normally go for ~$3,600 on a site like BlueNile, which is regarded as one of the better places for this purchase. On top of that, I am saving on sales tax. Now, I would be buying the ring solely for the diamond and then buying a new setting that she likes. Any reason why this wouldn't be the best idea? What should I look out for? How much does a setting normally go for? Any other recommendations?

http://tampa.craigslist.org/hil/jwl/3660693074.html

Ask her what she wants. Hell, let her pick one out. When I was engaged, the ring was a natural sapphire with little diamonds around it. I think it was $1200.

Have cash saved up. Find the "Little Jerusalem" in your town, where all the diamond merchants are. It may be one building or a street. Go door to door looking for rocks in your price range. Buy the best deal/one you want and have cash for. They'll put it in a mount for a few (150-200? Gold has gone up 4-5x since I did this) bucks more. No way I would buy a rock off of CL. I don't know enough to not get ripped off.

Oh, and when you're done, the merchant will tell you he will give you an insurance appraisal for anything up to 3x what you just paid. That would be the price you would pay at a jewelry store for the exact same rock which he would sell there on consignment.

My wife hates diamonds. Find out what she'd like, first.

Then, look at an estate sale. Have any ring bought from an independent person appraised by a neutral party before you buy it. Like Dr. Hess said, get an insurance appraisal.

Dr. Hess wrote: Have cash saved up. Find the "Little Jerusalem" in your town, where all the diamond merchants are. It may be one building or a street. Go door to door looking for rocks in your price range. Buy the best deal/one you want and have cash for. They'll put it in a mount for a few (150-200? Gold has gone up 4-5x since I did this) bucks more. No way I would buy a rock off of CL. I don't know enough to not get ripped off. Oh, and when you're done, the merchant will tell you he will give you an insurance appraisal for anything up to 3x what you just paid. That would be the price you would pay at a jewelry store for the exact same rock which he would sell there on consignment.

This is exactly what I did 28 years ago. Jewelers Row in Chicago. Exactly as stated above but go to 5 mall jewelers to learn the basics first.

My wife despises diamonds. Her ring? An 85$ Lab created ruby. Why? It's the one she wanted. I coulda dropped HUGE cash on a ring (and I probably would have given the opportunity) but it would have been time/money wasted.

Also+2 on jewelers row/indy guys. My ring came from an independent jeweler. You know those tungsten carbide rings with the CF center section you see all the guys go nuts over? Bevelled edges, super sweet.... usually about 300$? I'm wearing the prototype that brought that line to the US as I type this. My cost? 65$. He was like- yeah, we demo'd the line, it got bought, this is my prototype I brought back from Hong Kong. And it fit.

mndsm wrote: My wife despises diamonds. Her ring? An 85$ Lab created ruby.

A lot of guys are going to want to know if she has some sisters......

Datsun310Guy wrote:

mndsm wrote: My wife despises diamonds. Her ring? An 85$ Lab created ruby.

A lot of guys are going to want to know if she has some sisters......

Nope. Did I mention she's a massage therapist, is the one that told me to buy the ms3 (after I was going to walk on the deal) is the one that told me to quit my job, and has subsequently told me I'm not going back to work at all?

Buy one off craigslist and then tell her it was you grandmother's and you're sure she'd have wanted her to have it.

Touching story & excuse to cheap out all in one package. Problem solved.

carguy123 wrote: Buy one off craigslist and then tell her it was you grandmother's and you're sure she'd have wanted her to have it.

I'm not sure that lying about something is the best way to start a marriage. :-)

It's gonna depend highly on your prospective fiancee. My wife enjoyed picking out her own ring -- it was a moderately expensive setting, but she didn't want the $3K diamond that normally went in it, instead picking another stone that was 1% of the price. Some people, OTOH, want the romantic surprise of the ring showing up at the same time as the question. If you're proposing marriage, hopefully you know her well enough to take a guess at which of those two options she'll prefer. :-)

It may be worth your while to keep an eye out for deals on second-hand rings

rotard wrote: Ask her what she wants. Hell, let her pick one out. When I was engaged, the ring was a natural sapphire with little diamonds around it. I think it was $1200.

Very similar to the stone/settings I went with. Nice.

There are so many factors that play into the price of a diamond and then the ring. First you do need to know her expectation overall. Cut, shape, clarity and probably a bunch of terms that I dont recall.
I got into a jewerly wholesale market day and spent the day talking up the merchants and learning when I had to replace the original diamond that fell out of the setting and disappeared. The original we bought at a old time jewerly store. I was nervous but was able to play the various dealers against the others and get a pretty good deal on a loose stone. We then went to a fashion jewerly who made up a setting for the stone. It may have just been BS but he said that he was impressed with the stone. YMMV

You'll want to ask her what she likes, otherwise there could be a nasty face when you pop the question. It will also allow you to manage her expectations a bit if need be, a princess cut (square) cost a lot less per carat than a round cut will. So, if she says she wants X carats or one of the "halo" settings that are popular now you can explain to her that would mean less $$ goes to the stone. Also, I'd recommend steering her towards one of the classic styles, rather than the fad going on like the halo or whatever. The guys whose wives got the fad settings have had about half change settings already.

I did similar to what the doc said, and ended up with a great stone for about half what it would have cost anywhere else (shaws on Montrose & w. gray if you remember the town, Doc). The setting is a 6 prong Tiffany style white gold, which was 150 bucks. She gets compliments on it at least once a week she says, so I did pretty good in her eyes.

Bought my first ring on a jewler's row (Clark Bldg in PGH) and they are all pretty much a scam. They try to convince you that you are getting wholesale prices, and compared to the mall they are lower, but you are still way overpaying. If you spend $3000 on a ring, and walk into the next store with the ring and the "certificate" that proves the value of the ring, they will offer you $500 for it. The whole industry is a sham.

I bought my second ring from an online jewler through e-bay (in the early days) with no overhead. The ring was every bit as nice as the fir that cost 3x more. The diamond was much clearer and had better color and was a larger carat. Was is perfect under a microscope? Who cares? She loves it, never takes it off, will never sell it, and understands that IT IS A SYMBOL AND NOTHING MORE. (second wives rock!)

Who got the best deal of all? The guy who bought my wife's old engagement ring. That sucker cost her ex close to $6K, she wore it less than 18 months, sold it on consignment for less than $800. (and that was by far the best we could do on it, jewelry stores offered her $400) My advice, search Craigslist for a stunner that someone else took the hit on!

We went shopping together. I've no regrets about that. Together, we found a ring that she loved. Oh, I went and purchased it myself the next day (open secret) and made the proper presentation. That went fine, tears were leaked, out of four eyeballs. Much love was expressed.

Neither one of us understood the notion of spending a fortune on an gaudy piece of coal. It looks like broken glass and gets caught on sweaters and fishing nets. So a fortune was not spent, hardly any squished coal was procured, and she doesn't get snagged.

Instead, she's got a beautiful ring she loves. Pretty shades of blue, and it's smooth so fishing nets slip over it. True, some folk don't recognize it as the engagement ring it is. But then, the engagement was ours, not theirs.

make sure she'll say yes first...

...that's all I got...

Thanks for all the comments everyone. We've been dating 4 years so I think I have a pretty good idea on what she wants. Plus, I will consult with her sister and best friend, both of which I am on good terms with, to see what she wants. Otherwise, I want to keep it a surprise and leave her out of it.She probably would be fine with an alternative ring or a man made diamond, but since I am not 100% sure, I am going to go with real.

This jewelers row thing, I don't know that a place like Tampa would have such a thing. I spend some time in NYC for work so maybe I can check it out up here. Actually, one of the guys I used to work with did exactly that. He told his girlfriend he was going golfing, flew to NYC, bought a ring at a place he scoped out while he was up here for work, and then flew back down the same day. That being said, craigslist is still looking mighty enticing.

I think the goal is going to be SI2-SI1, H-G clarity, <1 carat in some kind of tiffany/classic setting.

whenry, how much was the setting?

The ring does not matter nearly as much as how you do it and the state of your relationship.

Here's how to tell if you are in a real wholesaler: there's nothing on display. Zip. The outer door is locked. You have to be beeped in. There's a desk, receptionist, guy in a suit probably named Something-stein, a safe. You tell him what you are looking for, he opens a drawer in the safe, pulls out a couple of packets, shows you the stones, one at a time after first putting them on a scale and pushing some buttons on a calculator and telling you a price based on the scale's digital weight readout. If that didn't happen, you are at a jewelery store, not a jewelery wholesaler.

I would guarantee that there is a community of these places in Tampa somewhere. No idea where that would be. There are probably blocks of them in NYC. I suggest finding some yellow pages or maybe google foo-ing wholesale jewelers and look for groups of businesses in the same building or right next to each other.

I can tell you where to get Indian food in Tampa, though.

Google: diamond wholesale tampa florida

There seems to be a concentration of hits around I-275 in Northwest Tampa.

Dr. Hess wrote: Here's how to tell if you are in a real wholesaler: there's nothing on display. Zip. The outer door is locked. You have to be beeped in. There's a desk, receptionist, guy in a suit probably named Something-stein, a safe. You tell him what you are looking for, he opens a drawer in the safe, pulls out a couple of packets, shows you the stones, one at a time after first putting them on a scale and pushing some buttons on a calculator and telling you a price based on the scale's digital weight readout. If that didn't happen, you are at a jewelery store, not a jewelery wholesaler. I would guarantee that there is a community of these places in Tampa somewhere. No idea where that would be. There are probably blocks of them in NYC. I suggest finding some yellow pages or maybe google foo-ing wholesale jewelers and look for groups of businesses in the same building or right next to each other. I can tell you where to get Indian food in Tampa, though.

Hook it up! Always interested in some new places to eat.

Ian F wrote: Google: diamond wholesale tampa florida There seems to be a concentration of hits around I-275 in Northwest Tampa.

How does one know what he's buying? I'll definitely take a look, sounds sketchy/fun.

definitely find out what she likes.

i agree paying more than $3K seems silly, but she may feel completely opposite. I thought that too, but unfortunatley ended up paying multiple times more than that... and sold my Corrado to cover some of the wedding costs to find something she actually wanted. Remember, many have heard, and believe in the 3-months salary rule of thumb (whoever made that rule needs to be punched). So if you're making more than $40K/year, you're looking at a $10K ring.

Some women really won't care. You just have to know what she really wants.

xflowgolf wrote: definitely find out what she likes. i agree paying more than $3K seems silly, but she may feel completely opposite. I thought that too, but unfortunatley ended up paying multiple times more than that... and sold my Corrado to cover some of the wedding costs to find something she actually wanted. Remember, many have heard, and believe in the 3-months salary rule of thumb (whoever made that rule needs to be punched). So if you're making more than $40K/year, you're looking at a $10K ring. Some women really won't care. You just have to know what she really wants.

Yeah, that's not happening. If I have to play by the 3 months salary rule I'll call my boss and tell him I quit.

xflowgolf wrote: Remember, many have heard, and believe in the 3-months salary rule of thumb (whoever made that rule needs to be punched).

DeBeers made it up! Along with the idea of getting a diamond for an engagement ring in the first place. The people selling you the diamonds at a 200000% markup are the ones creating the artificial demand. Its a huge racket.

For example. they began a campaign a few years ago to convince the women of Japan that they need rings (3000 years, no diamond rings, but suddenly its a tradition?) As the Chinese Middle Class grows, you will see rings there as well too. There is nothing religious, tradition-based, ceremony-based or anything else other than DeBeers Marketing.

That said, if your woman wants one, you gotta jump on the bandwagon because women are the ones we have sex with. (if we are guys. or gay women. or, well it's gets confusing...)