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The school ring, an academic tradition dating back to 1835, is enjoying a resurgence in popularity after a decade-long decline.
Even though school rings typically get dropped in a drawer or jewelry box after graduation, sales of them are up. Those who buy them say they do so for the sake of tradition.
“It’s something you can have forever and remember high school by and wear it always,” said Cassie Sehlmeyer, a sophomore from Toledo, Ohio, who recently ordered a ring from Jostens, the Minneapolis-based company that has been manufacturing and selling school rings for 100 years.
Cassie chose a lustrium (silver-like) ring with a dark-green stone. Symbols for cross-country and music are on either side of the ring, which cost $140.
Although Karen Van Dyke’s ring ended up in her jewelry box after her 1973 high school graduation, she wanted her son, Brent to have one.
“I think (class rings) are great. It’s a traditional part of high school.”
Brent chose a gold ring with a track shoe symbol, the year 2000, his school’s mascot and name, and his name. It cost $279. “It reminds me that I’m growing older and moving on to different parts of my life,” he said.
Since the first school ring was cast more than a century ago, sales have risen and fallen. Aggressive marketing and dramatic style changes have sparked the resurgence in sales, said Cindy Serratore of Jostens and Alan Miller, owner of Alan Miller Jewelers in Toledo, which sells ArtCarved class rings.
“We saw 12 years of slow but steady decline in classroom sales up until about — years ago, when we redesigned our class ring program. Since then we’ve seen a steady tick upward,” said Serratore. Jostens sells several hundred thousand rings a year.
Miller agrees that sales of the rings are on the upswing. He estimates that 60 percent of students at Toledo’s Clay High School -- his No. — school ring customer -- buy them.
Through the 1940s, the traditional ring was often gold, and featured a school crest. Set-in stones first appeared in 1927, Serratore said, but didn’t become popular until the 1950s.
Today, students can customize rings to fit their tastes by adding stones, antiquing, personal inscriptions, and symbols to reflect such interests as cycling, computers, track, martial arts, or music.
Serratore estimates 45 percent to 50 percent of high school students buy rings before they graduate. Each fall, sales representatives from ring companies set up displays in schools and take orders.
In the past decade, Miller says more than 2,500 rings have been sold at his jewelry stores. Typically, students, or often their parents, spend $250 to $300 for a ring, Ms. Serratore said. Prices start around $70 and can soar as high as $400.
Comparatively, according to Jostens’ literature, in 1975 a typical man’s 10-karat gold ring cost $43.20. Today, a similar ring would cost $360.
The earliest record of a school ring dates back to 1835 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Serratore said.
Knowing they may stop wearing the rings after graduation, some students like Heather Rubley, a junior, choose not to buy them.
Instead of ordering a high school ring, Heather recently received a gold ring for her birthday, something, she says, “I can wear for the rest of my life.”
Yet there are always those like Fran Holmes, a University of Toledo graduate student, who continue to wear their high school rings even after they graduate from college.
Holmes, who graduated from high school in 1991, still wears her ring on her right ring finger. Her undergraduate college ring is on her left middle finger. Both, she says, are there for keeps.
She chose her $300 gold-and-diamond high school ring intending to wear it always, and says it reminds her of close friends and the fun she had in high school. “It’s significant because my mother still wears hers and she’s 50-something.”!-- start headline/story here
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Mike Kedzierski, assistant principal at a Toledo, Ohio, high school, wears a class ring from his own high school days.