Engagement. What a beautiful thing, right? Two souls coming together to live out their lives united in love. Traditionally, a man purchases a sparkling, beautiful, and expensive diamond ring for his soon-to-be fiancée, kneels down on one knee, and asks the woman for her hand in marriage. Focus on that first part: the diamond ring. Along with the traditional shining centerpiece, there comes a peculiar question. Why do we actually buy our future spouses a diamond ring in the first place? Truth be told, our desire, our urge, and our connection to these happy white rings was started by possibly the best advertising campaign in history by the world renowned, De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd.

     Less than a century ago, Americans simply did not buy engagement rings, nor did they spend any extravagant amount of wealth on the process of marriage. Plainly, in this time, Americans just got married; diamond rings were merely luxury items. In the 1870s, De Beers was in dire straits when the diamond mining industry took an enormous plummet. This economic depression devastated the company until one fateful day when the executives hired N.W. Ayer & Son, an advertising agency, in the 1930s which drastically changed the complexion of the diamond industry.

     The Atlantic once stated, “De Beers manipulated not just supply but demand. In 1938, amid the ravages of the Depression and the rumblings of war, Harry Oppenheimer, the De Beers founder's son, recruited the New York–based ad agency N.W. Ayer to burnish the image of diamonds in the United States, where the practice of giving diamond engagement rings had been unevenly gaining traction for years, but where the diamonds sold were increasingly small and low-quality.”

     De Beers released an ad campaign that convinced the entire nation that, if a man truly loves a woman, he should get her an expensive lump of crystallized carbon. Which, in all honesty, should not be as expensive as it is at all. Since De Beers has a global monopoly on diamond money, they have a dexterous way of limiting the supply of diamonds to “increase scarcity,” which increases demand, and ultimately outrageously inflating the prices to earn more profit.

     Ever heard the saying “a diamond is forever”? That’s also part of De Beers historical ad campaign. This tactic is used to keep buyers from reselling their diamonds, and realizing how little resale value it actually has.

     Edward Jay Epstein wrote an article in 1982 for The Atlantic called Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond that stated, “An N.W. Ayer copywriter came up with the caption ‘A Diamond is Forever.’” This advertisement gave people the illusion that diamonds would last a lifetime and that one would never need to resell it; in actuality, however, diamonds can be shattered, chipped, discolored, and burned.  

     Therefore, one must wonder about the process, if even possible, of reselling a diamond. The truth is, any single diamond would lose about 80 to 90 percent of its original value. In Epstein’s article, he also evaluated the deprecation of a diamond’s value.  His chosen study stated that, in 1970, the London magazine Money Which?, underwent an experiment to see if diamonds are a worth the investment. The magazine bought a two half-carat pieces from one of London’s most upscale diamond dealers for about $1,000. It kept the diamonds for nearly a decade and tried to sell the diamonds.  Unfortunately, however, no jewelry store nor even whole-sale dealer would pay even half the price for what the magazine company paid for it. (Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond, Esptein 1982)

     All in all, diamond rings are not worth the price you see in the display case. If you are still skeptical, Nicky Oppenheimer said himself, “Diamonds are intrinsically worthless, except for the deep psychological need that they fill” (The Independent, 1999).

     Even with that said, one must not now look at or think about their diamond ring any differently.  Diamond rings are symbol of the love you will share with your significant other for the rest of your life.  Therefore, do not look at the monetary value and decide that your marriage is null and void without it. Instead, merely focus on the sentimental value.  For humans to take the time and money to buy a gift, to show their love openly, is an amazing part of life, no matter the origins or perhaps faulty traditions.  Diamonds may not be forever, but the love you and your partner share is, and that is what is truly important.

 

-Jason Edwards