Should I sell my grandmother's diamond ring?

Do not sell the ring. You will always be sorry you did.

Debts come and go and you will find other means to pay them off.
Consider yourself the custodian of a family heirloom and hold on to it for future generations.

Does the ring mean anything to your other family members?

Selling the ring could potentially alienate you from other family members if they think of this person more fondly than you do.

You cannot put a price on family- whether or not it is good or bad, nor a historical treasure that you have a direct connection to…

Sell it.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic My mom gave my brother and sister-in-law some other jewelry, and she felt that since my sister-in-law inherited jewelry from her own mother that she didn’t need the ring from our side. My sister is a cloistered nun, so she can’t have jewelry.

I don’t wear jewelry so I have no attachment to these things but others might. Checking with your family before selling it would be considerate.

Do you have any sentimental feelings about this ring? Would you be sorry if you sold it? I recently sold an entire collection of dolls that I had been amassing since I was in my teens. They were just sitting in boxes on the shelves and I finally realized that if I sold them they could be owned by someone who could really enjoy them and appreciate them the way I once had. If you have no attachment to it there is no reason to hold on to it. In the end stuff really doesn’t mean much. I like to follow Julie Morgenstern’s rule that says you only need hold onto things you “use or love.”

My background is in appraisals and auctioneering, and I can tell you from the “inside” that you will never, from any source, get as much as the ring is actually worth.

Not only that, but I think it is very probable that your heirs will love the ring because you once owned it. They won’t really know about mean granny, but they will associate it with their love for you.

I strongly advise you to keep it, in fact, if you can, why not wear it and get to love it on its own terms?

I strongly agree with @The_Compassionate_Heretic (in fact, he said what I was thinking). The ring might have strong sentimental value to others in your family, whether they admit it or not right now.

I personally could never sell an item like that. I tend to put a lot of sentimental value into things though.

My grandmother gave me the engagement ring she picked out with her second husband, he had proposed previously with a large, canary diamond…worth thousands, but my grandmother wanted a simple ruby.
My cousin, who my grandmother views as “worse off” is going to get the huge diamond, and I already received the ruby. But, my grandmother hasn’t given the ring to my cousin because she doesn’t trust her…doesn’t make sense to me. I cherish the ring my grandmother gave me, and even if given a ring worth thousands I wouldn’t sell it.

You don’t have any attachment to it, but like others said, other family members might. You should ask.

Compare the insurance appraisal with what a buyer of antique gold and diamonds would give you for the ring. Then keep it until the most suitable family recipient comes along.

The easiest way to go about this is ensure that no one else in the family has any type of mental or physical attachment to the ring and if no one steps forth, sell that bad boy. Keep in mind, you’ll go your lifetime without the ring, probably never being able to get it back. But you can’t miss something you never cared about from the beginning, right?

Don’t sell it.

Ask your daughter if she wants it….or your son.

if you really think the money is worth getting rid of it, go ahead. i think the rule that ‘family is precious, even if you don’t like them’ is kind of bull. blood =/= a relationship. and it’s just a material item. if no one in your family that should have a say have any objections to you selling it, and you feel like it’s more advantageous, do it. just weigh the pros and cons first. don’t feel guilted into keeping it, and don’t feel obligated to sell it.

you said that this is your “family heirloom.”
so don’t sell it…...