Breaking up is hard, but the price can be even more painful.
After splitting from her fiancée, Australian teacher Mia Pimentel thought she could at least make use of her engagement ring and move on.
Instead, I got a reality check that was more powerful than heartbreak.
The couple got engaged in 2021 after five years together, and exchanged rings to seal the deal.
But when the relationship broke up two years later, they each kept their diamonds — including a 1-carat Pimentel diamond solitaire, originally worth about $6,500.
At first, the ring remained untouched, a shining reminder of a chapter she was ready to close.
In the end, the Sydney resident decided to sell it, assuming it would bring in a decent chunk of change.
This assumption did not last long.
“But when he told me how little I was getting for it, my jaw hit the floor,” Pimentel said. Yahoo Lifestyle In a recent interview.
Verdict? Her ring, once worth $6,500, was now worth $350 — a loss of about $6,150.
So what happened to brilliance?
According to renowned Sydney-based jeweler Ernesto Bono, the reality of a resale is rarely as glamorous as the original purchase.
“Jewelers will often take the ring apart and redesign it, and then they have to make their own profit. It’s a lot of work, and it’s what you pay for,” Bono explained to the outlet.
In other words, this hefty price tag isn’t just about the diamonds, it’s about the design, craftsmanship, and markings that don’t carry over once the ring hits the resale market.
Pimentel’s ring suffered another blow: The stone was lab-grown.
Bono said advances in lab-grown diamond production have made them much cheaper to produce in recent years, causing their resale value to rapidly decline.
“For example, what was previously $2,000 per carat may now be around $500,” he said. “This lowers the overall cost of the diamond itself, so it doesn’t retain its value as much as a natural diamond.”
This follows previous reporting by The Post.
As Mara Oberman, co-founder of Louped (formerly I Do Now I Don’t), told The Post, lab-grown diamonds “don’t hold the resale value that natural stones do” — a trade-off some couples accept for size, affordability or ethics.
Oberman noted that many brides are now gravitating toward pre-owned natural diamonds instead, attracted to their durability and smaller environmental footprint.
She prefers used stones, saying they “come with a past, have stood the test of time, and still retain their value — both emotionally and financially.”
Unlike newly mined diamonds, it does not require “new mining or a new footprint,” she added.
Lab-grown diamonds entered the market in the early 2000s, but only became competitive with mined stones in the 2000s as technology improved, Rachel Bergstein, author of Sparkle and Fire: A Biography of Diamonds, told The Post.
Since then, falling prices and rising demand have helped these companies capture a significant share of American engagement rings, compared to just a small share a decade ago.
However, it seems that when it comes to rings, bigger — or newer — doesn’t always mean better, especially when you’re trying to sell.