Diamond Engagement Rings

Recently, there have been a spate of diamond robberies and it looks like it could just be attributed to times being hard. Let’s face it – diamonds are worth so much now that it would be a great temptation to anyone who needs money in a hurry.

At Newport Beach, California, a 47-year old lady forgot a bag of jewellery in her car and realised the next day that it was gone. In the bad were her diamond necklaces, diamond rings and earrings. The car, a Bentley, was in her garage. What she wants back most of all – and she’s offering a huge reward – is her 6-carat diamond engagement ring which was with the other jewellery. Unfortunately a lot of the jewellery was not insured enough so obviously the lady is quite distraught.

Vonda Simon had just returned from a trip to Europe and had wanted her jewellery appraised which was why they were all in that bag together. However, not only did she leave it in the car, she left the car as well as her garage door unlocked. And the jewellery was gone the next morning even though she lives in a gated, secure neighbourhood.

The effects of the financial crisis are beginning to be felt, especially in the US. In Oregon, you’ll find people driving up to the pawn shops to hand over their jewellery like diamond rings and other pieces so that they can pay their electricity bills or make sure they have enough gas in their tanks to drive around for the rest of the week or the month.

It’s not just jewellery that people are pawning – it’s happening with items like TVs and golf kits as well.

The women come in with their jewellery and their eyes full of tears. Sometimes they have diamond rings that have been passed down a few generations and it’s hard to hand them over. The pawn shop owners sometimes share their pain. The only consolation for these people is the fact that if they do manage to work and get some money, they can come and get their jewellery back. They wouldn’t be able to do that if they sold their valuables.

One such pawnshop called Silver Lining in Oregon trains its employees to be sensitive to people who come in with their valuables. The owner asks them to put themselves in the other person’s shoes when they deal with them. It’s heartbreaking for anyone to part with their personal possessions and people like these would never do that unless they had to. Yet, there’s hope when they leave their jewellery and other valuables in a pawn shop that one day they can come and get them back. It is this hope that keeps them going.

Come October 15 and two large beautiful diamonds are going to be up for sale at Christie’s New York Sale. Called the Ponahalo Diamonds, they weigh 102.11 and 70.87 carats approximately and are among some of the finest diamonds in the world today.

The Ponahalo Diamond was found in a DeBeers mine and since it was a very special diamond, it was given a name, following a tradition of christening the ones that were the best. This one was 316.15 carats and the name meant ‘vision’ in the local dialect. This large rough diamond was cut up into four diamonds and these two that are on sale took 1 ½ years to shape.

Whatever is realised from the sale of these diamonds will go towards the Diamond Empowerment Fund.

The New York Sale also features a whole lot of jewellery that are outstanding like exquisitely designed diamond engagement rings, necklaces, brooches, etc. The estimated sale proceeds are in the region of around £18 million.

With the economy growing, one finds that it isn’t just the very rich who are buying diamonds and suddenly, this dazzling gem which has till now been seen as expensive, is now being viewed as being affordable by the Czechs. This is probably a result of growing consumer confidence as well and more and more of them are buying jewellery and expensive watches.

One Czech company that used to sell around 1000 diamond rings at the beginning of the century now sells that number in a month. What is being noticed is also the fact that young adults in their twenties are now walking in to buy a diamond engagement ring.

There was a time when the Czech Republic was known for its jewellery and its diamonds. With communism taking over the country, people moved into a more austere way of life and it isn’t till recently that attitudes began to change – and change fast. Not only are people buying more diamond engagement rings, they are buying jewellery as investment and there are so many media campaigns by leading jewellery houses to entice them along that path. Looks like the Czechs are on a diamond rediscovery road!

It’s true. There’s something about celebrities that make us want to know everything about them and an engagement is such a big part of people’s lives. We get a kind of vicarious pleasure when the media takes us into their personal lives – lives that maybe secretly we wish we had. And of course, the fact that their diamond rings are usually bigger and so much more expensive that we could ever hope to wear makes it just that much more enthralling.

Let’s take a look at some of the rings that probably made our eyes pop out of their sockets just looking at pictures! There was Paris Hilton’s 24 carat ring from her billionaire boyfriend though that did not lead to a wedding ring. And of course, Christina Aguilera’s 20 carat diamond engagement ring. More recently, there was Beyonce’s 18-carat ring. ( Gosh – how do they carry those rocks around?) Oh, let’s not forget the biggest one of them all – Elizabeth Taylor’s 30-carat diamond engagement ring – just one of her many!

Royalty has always been in the news for their jewellery. There was Princess Diana’s 18-carat ring and before that, Grace Kelly’s 12-carat ring.

It just goes to show that diamond engagement rings just have that certain something special to them. If we can’t have something that is huge, we’ll find someone who does and read all about it!

You could just have got your engagement ring free if you live in the US and you bought it from any Bremer store. Bremer Jewelry launched a ‘Pray for Rain’ promotion where there were seven engagement rings given away free. All that was needed was at least an inch of rain on their wedding day.

Here’s how it worked. Couples bought the diamond engagement rings, then prayed for rain on their wedding day. It did rain on the 13th of September – and there was three inches of rain, not one. So seven couples who got married that day got their rings free. Sure, they had to shift everything indoors where an outdoor celebration was planned but they were all ecstatic as the cost of their engagement rings was reimbursed up to $5000.

A diamond engagement ring forms a large part of the engagement and wedding expenses. To get all that money reimbursed must have made those couples so ecstatic!

That’s what the market forecast is for the US alone. It is estimated that even though there is a recession on, the spending on diamond engagement rings has not gone down as some had forecast they would. Instead there seems to be a surge in spending on both engagement rings as well as wedding rings. This is over and above the rise in prices of diamonds and precious metals.

So can we infer that more people are getting engaged or married? Or are more people getting engaged and married more often? Or are they just spending a lot more on their diamond engagement rings, wedding rings and other jewellery as well?

This study was done by The Wedding Report in the US and it states that the expected rise is going to be over 13% in the next five years. It has also predicted that most of the wedding as well as the engagement rings will be set with diamonds and the metal used will be white gold. And some trivia from this study: they found that the most popular month for engagements was December and the most popular day when a man actually popped the question was Saturday.

You don’t want it lying around reminding you of how he ditched you, do you? Once the guy has flown, it’s time to get practical. At least that’s what most of the Agony Aunts would tell you. And there’s a great way of doing just that right now.

The site’s called exboyfriendjewelry.com. You can go, sign up for free and hawk your diamond engagement ring there. Or even any other jewellery that he might have given you while he was still in love with you.

There’s just one condition though. When you post a picture of the engagement ring or bit of jewellery together with a description of the item you want to sell, you have to post a story of how things went bad. Get to that site and you’ll find many a story up there – it’s a great place to vent and get rid of your anger and frustration. It’s a great place to read about others’ stories too – some sad, some angry, some funny. And of course, it’s a great place to get rid of any memories of the one who hurt you.

A few days ago, an article in one of the UK newspapers set one thinking. Do guys really notice things like diamond engagement rings and wedding rings? Well, the writer of this article felt most men don’t. They don’t look at rings on the fingers of their wives, on celebrities, on mums, on strange women.

Now we wonder if that’s true. Is it only women who are so concerned about engagement rings and wedding rings? We don’t think so. Many men might be totally oblivious to the rings on women’s fingers, yes. But there are quite a few, the romantic ones who do notice – who take the trouble to choose the best ring going, to even design the special rings they give to the women in their lives. As for the rest, as long as women notice what other women are wearing, as long as they go, ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ over a fabulous diamond engagement ring, diamonds and rings will really be forever!

Nahla Ariela Aubry – a beautiful name for a beautiful baby. And the beautiful mother, Halle Berry was seen out with her at the Los Angeles zoo and they were both having a great time. What was intriguing to those who saw her there was the fact that she had a huge sparkler on her wedding ring finger. Was it an engagement ring?

Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry, who is ten years younger than her, have been together for three years. The beautiful Oscar winning star and the good-looking model could well be thinking of marriage now that they have a daughter and such a little stunner at that. Well, if that is really a diamond engagement ring and not just another ring, then we wish all three of them the very best!