What was the price of a diamond before DeBeers marketing?

[duker]

According to this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-weissman/7-reasons-why-you-shouldn_b_1720870.html The De Beers company made a very intense marketing campaign to increase the demand of diamonds, along with many other bad tricks, in 1940's. So, what was the situation of diamonds before that? How much did a diamond cost? Were other gemstones more appreciated than diamonds? Did the wedding ring existed?

 

[denverappraiser]

Re: What was the price of a diamond before DeBeers marketing

The notion that every bride should have an engagement ring and that that ring should contain a diamond was the gestalt of the DeBeers push in the 40’s. It was extremely successful. Prior to that diamond engagement rings existed but they weren’t really a broadly accepted consumer product much less expected. Rich people bought them and enjoyed them but there wasn’t a feeling of a social requirement to buy one. When I see things from earlier times I see a lot more pins and seriously opulent things like tiaras or goblets and a lot fewer obvious engagement rings. They existed, but you didn’t see them on the fingers of middle class women. This stuff was expensive and catered to the well-to-do. The DeBeers folks didn’t as much drive up the prices as they drove up the size of the market. After all, nearly everybody wants an engagement ring at some point in their lives, not all that many are shopping for a tiara.

Pearls used to be popular in engagement rings but are far less so now. More I think because of durability problems than DeBeers marketing. Sapphires and rubies were and still are popular as engagement stones. Plain gold bands were popular. Lots of people got married with no ring at all.

 

[Lane03]

Re: What was the price of a diamond before DeBeers marketing

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/

 

[bunnycat]

Re: What was the price of a diamond before DeBeers marketing

Just for fun, even though the idea of a diamond engagement ring is fairly new, the idea of some sort of betrothal token is not. I googled "history of engagement ring" to see what came up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engagement_ring

http://www.rd.com/advice/relationships/the-history-of-engagement-rings/

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/weddings/2007/06/diamonds_are_a_girls_worst_friend.html (some similar info as the article circulating in the threads right now but from 2007).