[sports-rings]

Hi Rohder19,

welcome to Net54baseball.com and best of luck in your collecting endeavors.

The online ring dealers are fine, don't be affraid to speak with them and see if they have something you are interested in. Just do some research. Sometimes they are more money than say ebay, since they are doing this for a living, but I find they are worth it because they are dependable, knowledgeable, and get some great rings.

Yes, college rings these days do not contain real gold and never contained real diamonds. The older rings from 10 years ago or older were made of solid gold (usually 10K gold)

The only sports rings that have value for collectors is College football and basketball. A football National championship ring would go for several thousand dollars while a conference ring would go for a few hundred.

Collecting rings is not like collecting a Tom Seaver 1974 card where you can find 5-10 for sale on any given day. They are hard to come by so if you really want that ring, it may be a good idea to pay more to secure the ring before someone else does.

Regarding salesman samples, the market has plunged thanks to Irv Lerner (see my blog or the other active thread on this section). Thanks to Irv and others, there are so many fakes out there that it's hard to know if what you have is a real salesman sample or fake.

Salesman samples seem to be a bad investment these days.

Additionally, many of the auction houses throw the word "sample" around when in fact they are selling a cheap replica.