Diamonds: The Lure Of The Engagement Ring

It's wedding season and in honor of the oh-so-many pending nuptials, Tangomag has a story on the history and luxurious lure of the diamond engagement ring.

According to a recent DeBeers study, four out of five brides receive diamond engagement rings. National Jeweler's 2003 survey found that more than 40 percent of customers planned on buying a diamond one carat or larger. And the 2002 American Wedding Study (sponsored by Condé Nast) revealed that the average engagement ring costs $3,576: more than 16 percent of the average wedding budget.

"It's hard to talk about exactly when these traditions started," says Vicki Howard, adjunct professor of economics and women's studies at Hartwick College. "Before the 1870s, diamonds were rare.

Howard explains that the modern engagement ring's story really begins with the discovery of vast quantities of diamonds in South Africa in the late 1860s. Diamond jewelry of all kinds became more and more popular in subsequent decades, but the industry fell on hard times in the 1930s, due to the Depression and its accompanying plummeting marriage rate. Soon the DeBeers diamond cartel had a surplus. "So they tried to promote the diamond engagement ring," she says. DeBeers put New York's N.W. Ayer advertising agency on the case, and in 1948 they hit pay dirt with the slogan "A Diamond Is Forever." This hypnotic mantra has seduced America ever since, calling out from magazine and television ads, billboards, and bus shelters.

Read the whole story here.


In other diamond news, Sotheby's auction house attempted to auction off a 72.22-carat, "D" flawless white diamond in Hong Kong last week, however, the final bid of $9.24 million failed to meet the minimum reserve price. Not all was lost as, according to Reuters:

The diamond was later sold to a private buyer for an undisclosed sum, Sotheby's said...

The Sotheby's stone was the third largest "pear-shaped" diamond ever auctioned globally, and was of exceptional quality given its size, symmetry and esteemed "Type IIA" rating, given only to the most brilliant of white "D" color diamonds.

The poor Hong Kong result however suggests the market for top tier gems may be suffering from global economic weakness.

Worried you missed your chance? Fear not:

The next big test could be a massive 101-carat, "near-flawless," squash-ball sized diamond which will be sold by rival auction Christie's next month in Hong Kong, in what's being dubbed the largest diamond ever auctioned in Asia and could fetch $6 million.

Comments

[YankeeCanuck]

Canadian diamonds are clean-- mined in Nunavit, providing opportunity to native people-- a third of the work force. Here's a link:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/diamonds/

[DaveDonelson]

It's a crying shame Sotheby's couldn't persuade a buyer to bid more than $9.24 million for the 72.22 carat diamond it tried to auction in Hong Kong. Perhaps the benighted bidder, having failed to meet the undisclosed reserve price, might care to spend that sum on something worthwhile, like the well-being of the people who were exploited to find such baubles. I don't know if the rock came from the Democratic Republic of Congo (where many diamonds are mined) but the per capita annual income is less than $1 per day in that troubled nation, which means the disappointed buyer's tidy $9 mil would support more than 30,000 people for a year.
-- Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

[anastasiabeaverhousen]

If the availability of topsoil was as closely administered as the diamond supply, dirt would sell for thousands of dollars.

The bull that is the diamond trade (i.e., DeBeers) is as close to legalized organized crime as you'll ever see........short of the shrub and his family, that is.

[trinity]

Stopped wearing my 1/2 c engagement ring years ago...I much rather just wear by simple wedding band. For some reason diamonds bring up the images of child soldiers and civil wars in my mind.

[67bug]

Never had one, never want one. I want a cool artisan made ring, not another mall store clone. I'll forgo the diamonds completely.

[castrochavez08]

Here is where they come from, and the people who bring them to you.

http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=blood+diamonds&um=1&ie=UTF-8

So glamorous!

[GeologyRocks]

One reason why diamond wedding rings might be so popular as engagement rings is that they are the perfect metaphor for the impending marriage: Diamonds, which can only form at great depths under tremendous pressures, are mined by poor people working long hours under harsh conditions, who end up with almost nothing to show for their efforts. Marriages also tend to occur under tremendous pressures where poor people struggling to labor through the depths of despair usually end up with almost nothing to show for their efforts (not counting the children, which with a few annoyances are a fairly good byproduct).

[HarlDelos]

I presented my sweetheart with a 1.25 carat diamond ring and asked her to marry me. She said yes, but not with THAT ring.

She pulled me - by the nose - back to the store, where she had me return the ring. Then she picked out a new ring, same design, but with a quarter-carat diamond.

"I want everyone to know that it's a real diamond," she said. "They don't make cubic zirconia rings in quarter carat."

We're now rapidly approaching our 10th anniversary....