Shopping for an engagement ring on a tight budget can be tough. You want to get that special someone in your life a really beautiful symbol of your love and commitment, but you don’t want to pay an arm and a leg for it. While there are plenty of advice columns telling you how much you “should” spend on a ring, the only person who knows your needs and budget is you. Fortunately, finding a piece of affordable jewelry — including engagement rings under $1,000 — is far from impossible.
If this is your first time shopping for an engagement ring under $1,000, or even if you’re interested in selling an affordable engagement ring, you probably have a lot of questions about the process. For instance, why are some engagement rings more affordable than others? What characteristics should you look for when shopping for an under-$1,000 engagement ring? Is it even possible to get a diamond engagement ring for less than $1,000? Lastly, where can you find a quality engagement ring for less than $1,000?
In today’s guide, we will answer all of these questions and more, so let’s get started!
What Makes Your Engagement Ring More Affordable?
Whether you’re buying or selling, there’s a fixed value that the market has assigned to your ring. It may vary a little based on who you ask, but if you talk to gemologists, jewelers, and others who have years of experience analyzing diamonds, precious metals, and pieces of jewelry, they’ll likely all come up with values that fall within a relatively small range.
For example, let’s say that you want to buy a diamond engagement ring from an independent seller. It features a 1-carat solitaire diamond and a simple yellow-gold band. The seller wants $800 for it. You’re not sure if you should trust that price, so you ask a trained jeweler and a trusted gemologist to appraise the ring independently. The jeweler offers an appraisal of $1,600, while the gemologist offers an appraisal of $1,500.
The professionals offered appraisal values that were relatively close to one another (within 7% of each other), while the independent seller offered a price that was exactly half of the highest appraised value. This is part of the reason why determining the “value” of an engagement ring is not always easy.
Professionals appraise jewelry based on fixed characteristics, which leaves less room for subjectivity. Alternatively, individual sellers set a price that can be based on a wide variety of things, including the appraisal value, estimated market value (i.e. how much they could realistically get for it due to supply and demand), sentimental value, and how long the seller is willing to wait to have cash in hand (lower prices help move merchandise faster). As a result, one ring can be more or less affordable based on a variety of subjective factors and objective characteristics.
Characteristics and Factors to Consider
So, what really makes your engagement ring more affordable? Since it’s difficult to gauge things like the sentimental value of a ring or a seller’s desire to unload a ring as quickly as possible, it’s best to focus on more fixed characteristics of the ring itself. The gemstone (or gemstones) will be one of the biggest factors to consider. Assuming that your engagement ring features one or more diamonds, the 4 C’s of diamonds will come into play: Color, Carat, Cut, and Clarity. Certain diamond colors are more or less valuable than others, and this is typically based on rarity and larger market forces that dictate the popularity of a given color at a given time. Similarly, the cut of a diamond can increase or the decrease the selling value of a ring based on the cut’s perceived popularity and scarcity.
Carat and clarity are far more quantitative. All other things being equal, a higher carat count will result in a higher sale price, and a lower carat count will result in a lower sale price. Lastly, clarity is a measurement of the presence and severity of inclusions (imperfections) that take away from a diamond’s shine and visual appeal. More inclusions result in a cheaper engagement ring, while fewer or no inclusions result in a much more expensive ring.
And these are just the contributing factors related to the gemstone(s)! Other important factors include the band material (silver is far less expensive than 18k gold or platinum), the band design, the brand (luxury brands like Tiffany & Co. fetch higher prices), and even the age of the ring. While pre-owned rings are often less expensive than new rings, you may encounter higher prices if a ring’s age makes it particularly rare or historically significant.
Buying A Pre-Owned Engagement Ring
As a buyer on a budget, you’ll want to figure out the best ways to get the most value for your money. If you want to buy a luxury ring without paying luxury prices, you have a few different options, but the best one is buying a pre-owned engagement ring. The only issue is that most avenues for finding and purchasing used engagement rings are either limited in what they offer or simply not that trustworthy. For example, we would never recommend buying a pre-owned engagement ring off Craigslist or eBay sight unseen.
Instead, consider a dependable platform like Have You Seen The Ring. At HYSTR, you can narrow your search to just rings valued at $1,000 or less, make a bid, negotiate a price, allow our trained gemologists to verify the authenticity of the ring, and then wait for your purchase to arrive in the mail. The entire process is secure and reliable from start to finish, protecting both you and the seller at the same time. Plus, we offer the largest marketplace of prospective engagement ring buyers and sellers, helping connect you with your dream ring at a price that makes sense for you.
Lab Diamond Engagement Rings
Another way to reduce the cost of an engagement ring is to choose lab a diamond ring over a natural diamond ring. Lab diamonds are compositionally identical to natural diamonds; the main difference is that natural diamonds take millions of years to form under the Earth (or in space), while lab diamonds take just a few weeks to form in a laboratory. This hyperspeed production process allows more diamonds to enter the market in a much shorter amount of time, at a lower cost, and with fewer ethical and environmental concerns. As a result, lab diamond engagement rings tend to cost far less than natural diamond engagement rings.
If you want to get the best of both worlds and really save a fortune on your engagement ring, you should consider a pre-owned lab diamond engagement ring. Not only could you get 50% (or more) off the price of a comparable new ring, but you could also further reduce the costs by opting for a lab diamond. If you’re currently in the market for a pre-owned lab diamond ring for less than $1,000, be sure to check out HYSTR’s wide collection of used lab diamond rings!
We hope you enjoyed our guide on engagement rings under $1,000! Are you currently trying to buy or sell a used engagement ring? If so, be sure to contact HYSTR today!
