NEW YORK, NY - It was supposed to be simple. He’d been saving for seven months. She’d sent herself a Pinterest board she thought he hadn’t noticed. They’d talked about the future in that careful way couples do when they both know what’s coming but nobody wants to ruin the surprise. The budget for the engagement ring was $8,000, serious money scraped together from overtime shifts and a tax refund and the kind of quiet discipline that only love makes possible.
Then he walked into a jewelry store. And the $8,000 that had felt like so much suddenly felt like nothing.
The rings the sales associate steered him toward started at $12,000. The ones that matched what she’d pinned were north of $15,000. He asked about something in his range and watched the associate’s enthusiasm dim in real time, a subtle shift in energy that said, without words, "You're not really our customer." He left with nothing but a sick feeling in his chest and the quiet fear that he was about to disappoint the person he loved most.
That night, at 1 a.m., unable to sleep, he typed five words into Google: Why is jewelry so expensive?
The Numbers That Changed Everything
What he found over the next two hours wasn’t just surprising. It was infuriating. Lab-grown diamonds, chemically and optically identical to mined stones, cost manufacturers roughly $100 to $200 per carat to produce, yet retail for $1,000 per carat or more. Traditional jewelry markups run between 300% and 1,000% above actual material and labor costs. That $15,000 ring he’d been shown? The gold, the stones, the setting, the labor, the real cost of everything that goes into it might total $2,000 to $3,000. The rest was showroom rent, marketing budgets, sales commissions, and pure margin.
And perhaps most devastating: the moment you buy a ring at traditional retail and walk out the door, it can lose up to 90% of its value. Try reselling a $10,000 ring and you may be offered $1,000. Not because the ring changed. Because the markup was never real to begin with.
He showed her the next morning over coffee. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Then: “So we were about to pay $15,000 for something worth $2,000?”
That question, quiet, steady, and a little heartbroken, is one that millions of couples never get the chance to ask because the industry makes sure they never see the math.
Finding TrueSanity at Midnight
Somewhere during that late-night spiral through pricing forums and industry breakdowns, he landed on TrueSanity.com. The site looked different from anything he’d seen: dark, cinematic, with no soft-focus lifestyle imagery. More like a fashion editorial than a jewelry store. But what stopped his scrolling was the Transparency Manifest: a public commitment to showing every cost, every margin, and every sourcing detail behind every piece the company sells.
For the first time in the entire process, he felt like he was being treated as an adult. Not upsold. Not profiled. Not quietly judged for his budget, either. The collections were stunning—bold designs, ethically sourced materials, the kind of pieces that look and feel like luxury because they are. The difference was that the price reflected honest craftsmanship, not an elaborate performance designed to separate him from the maximum amount of money possible.
He bought the ring within his budget. It was beautiful. It was ethically sourced and transparently priced. And when he proposed, she said yes before he finished the sentence.
What They Want You to Know
They’re not anti-jewelry. They’re not anti-romance. They’re not telling anyone to spend less on the person they love. What they want other couples to understand is simpler than that: you have the right to know what you’re paying for. The emotion of the moment; the shaking hands, the tears, the yes, should never be used as a tool to keep you from asking basic questions about where your money goes.
The love was always real. The price didn’t have to be a lie too.
TrueSanity.com • Read the Transparency Manifest • Explore Collection
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