LOS ANGELES: Diamonds may be forever. But what’s a girl to do when she gets dumped or divorced and those rings, necklaces and love gifts lose their emotional sparkle?
Help is just a click away on new websites that provide an outlet for selling jewellery from past relationships, sharing break-up stories and helping broken hearts heal. “You go through a divorce. What do you do with that ring? Maybe you have a child you can pass it on to. Maybe you don’t. It just sits there,” said Marie Perry, who with her stepdaughter Megahn Perry runs www.exboyfriendjewelry.com.
Three months after its launch with the slogan “You Don’t Want It. He Can’t Have It Back,” the website has 3,000 registered users and more than 600 postings of rings, bracelets and earrings for sale — all with a personal tale attached. “Studs from a Dud,” writes one woman, selling a pair of cubic zirconia earrings given to her three years ago. Six months later, she says, the boyfriend dumped her over the phone.
“Oops,” writes another, selling a white gold wedding band. “Hey, Mom and Dad, remember that time I got married really young? Sorry about that. I can’t pay you back for the wedding, but I’ll split whatever I get for these with you. Deal?”
The idea was born when Megahn Perry, a Los Angeles actress and writer, was looking for a safe, reliable place to sell a wedding set after an amicable divorce and realised others might have boyfriend jewellery languishing in drawers or with attendant memories that make them too painful to wear.
Ebay felt too anonymous. So she teamed up with her stepmother Marie, researched the market and found a gap in it.
New Orleans students, Allison Wasserman and Elizabeth Rothbeind, set up a similar venture, www.Ex-cessories.com. With the motto “Don’t Get Mad — Break Even,” it offers independent appraisals of jewellery, matches buyers with sellers, and provides a social network. Although aimed at women, the websites also welcome men.
