I see they have rather a lot more shapes and styles of class rings than I’d known of. Much more than my era (1975-1980ish). Which actually makes me wonder how many times I’ve seen a class ring on a finger and not recognized it as such. Be that finger male or female.
Also surprisingly, the college ring collection seems much less extensive. I’d have expected the opposite.
Class of '80! Woot!
I’m the target audience for these: I have a terminal case of nostalgia*. Convincing me to buy something to remember my HS years should have been easy.
But I resisted. I never got a college ring, either.
I don’t see the appeal: If I wore a Havahd or MIT ring, people would think I’m showing off. If I wore a UW-Platteville ring, the Havahd and MIT folk would say “why you pretending to be somebody with your pathetic state school ring?” Or at least, that’s what I’d think they were thinking.
Related to class rings, do they still make class photos you can give to your classmates? Or those little “calling cards” with your name you were supposed to give to all your friends so they wouldn’t forget you? It doesn’t seem like it would be a thing in this digital age, so I was just wondering.
(I was so cheap as a senior, not only didn’t I get a ring, or class photos, or calling cards, but I took my own senior photo, developed and printed it in the school’s photo lab. So there is exactly one senior class photo of me.)
*I still have my HS diploma, my grade school diploma, all my HS and college yearbooks, every school class photo from kindergarten to 12th grade, and all my grade school report cards.
I had one (long lost like so many others) made out of the cheap stuff. This was in the late 80s and it was still pretty common at my school and, as noted upthread, many a girl showed that she was taken by wearing her boyfriend’s ring, either on a chain or with a half-mile of yarn wrapped around the ring to size it down. It’s not as though you were a pariah for not having a ring but there was nothing weird about getting one either.
When my kid was in high school ~2015, I think he got a flier for them but had no interest. I think they’ve largely disappeared in popularity aside maybe from select pockets. If you were deeply into your school’s activities (sports, drama, choir, etc) I guess I could see someone still getting a ring to commemorate those things (maybe?) but the average “go to school and go home” student doesn’t have any connection or desire to wear a ring for it.
At the height of their popularity the main reason for getting a ring ws so that you could let your girl friend put it on a chain around her neck and let it bounce between her tits. This meant you were “going steady”. After you broke up you got your ring back but you always had the satisfaction that it spent a lot of time with her tits.
Surely it spent more time there than you (any you) did.
I didn’t go to high school in the US but my youngest siblings did for 3 and 4 years. Big school, 750 students per class in 1980s. Quite a diverse population from a Socioeconomic Status and racial perspective. Class rings were a thing. Largely a white middle class thing. My parents would have freaked out if they were asked to pony up $200 for a ring.
My nephews went to a school in the same general area, but a selective public school. Similarly large (over 4000 students). Neither of them remembers being offered a ring.
My daughter went to a small public high school in New England in the 2020s in a very affluent town. No rings were offered. Her bestie in college went to a large “high performing” public high school in Redmond WA. No rings there either.
The only person in our team at work (15 people mostly native New Englanders) who wears a ring is wearing a Mass Maritime Academy ring. FWIW, most of us regard him as a bit of an asshole. Not because of the ring.
But is the ring a signifier?
That jogged loose a similar memory from around the same time. I remember the catalog with various alloys and engraving options. Yearbooks, too.
I got the basemetal one and chipped the stone within a month of getting it but I do wear it every once in a while.
Class of 76. Class rings were mostly a jock/jockette thing, sort of related to the letter jacket thing. I had no jockitude whatsoever but my mom insisted that I get a class ring and paid for it. I wore it a few times at family gatherings for mom’s benefit. I don’t think I ever wore it in “public”. The ring might still occupy a small space somewhere in the bottom of my sock drawer.
But they must still be a thing, I can remember my next door neighbor recently complaining how much his kids’ rings cost.
A lot of people take an extra year to graduate college. I recall that they had a thing that if you bought a ring and you ended up graduating a year later (or earlier I suppose) they would exchange it for a new one with the correct year for free.
I sorta did the opposite.
Got my college ring for my expected graduation year. Then they altered how much of my prior credit they accepted. So I was suddenly able to graduate 1 year early. Then I did a 2 year grad school program.
With the effect that my ring has the middle year between my undergrad and grad school diplomas. Talk about getting the right answer for the wrong reason. Which sorta kinda describes one heck of a lot of my life. 
Other than the times when I got the wrong answer for the right reason. 
My university (Texas A&M) is one of the “Senior Military Colleges”, and at one point was a strictly all-male, all-military school. So rings were and are a big deal to this day.
I’ve had more than one military or ex-military person ask me if I went to one of the service academies (it varies by the person’s branch of service) because I’ve got a big clunky gold ring. The distinguishing thing is that the academies all have stones, while ours are just gold.
Not to me. But he definitely gives peaked in high school vibes. He’s incompetent and overconfident, but also tall, white and male, so in the eyes of many he is a natural leader.
Let’s just say he thinks “frequently wrong, but never in doubt” is a compliment.
He’s wrong. Again.
Makes sense. I moved halfway across the country six months after I got my high school class ring. So, one day I called and made arrangements to send in my ring and they’d send me back one with a new school name. Same stone, and design on the sides.
I think I was prepared to spend money, but only had to pay shipping. (That said. Take thirty plus year old memories with the appropriate grain of salt.)
For me, early nineties, class rings were common enough to not be weird, but plenty didn’t get them either.
I liked my college a lot and bought a college ring. I bought it 5 or 10 years later, because that was when I could afford one.
A guy in my department head school class graduated from USNA. Not remarkable in itself—we had many USNA grads in the class (and I am sure the same would be true of the class before, the class after, and every other class ever).
What was remarkable was that he did not have a class ring. I know because he told us so. Said it was such a big deal that one of the staff officers at USNA counseled him in writing about it, but he stood firm and decline to purchase one.
He was kind of a shit bag.
Anyway, as far as high school class rings, I recall that they were offered for sale, but did not get one myself nor, I believe, did most of my classmates. This was in the early aughts.
But you better believe I got a class ring when I graduated college (not from a service academy, but a different military school). 44 DWT, made of 14k gold with a garnet gemstone. No, I don’t wear it much. I also got a “celestrium” ring of the same size but with a metal top in lieu of stone. Celestrium being Balfour’s trademarked pot metal.
What I was a bit surprised by—just a but—was that there wasn’t even a mention of class rings when I graduated from law school not three years ago. Makes me wonder if they’ve gone out of style.
I graduated in 1965 and everybody got them, and yes, had gold in them
My wife worked for a company that had several A&M grads and they all had rings. These were guys that I believe all have PhDs from the school. So, my own anecdotal data is: Yep, rings true (sorry, pun wasn’t intended until I proofread).
I bought a HS ring. I never wore it, and it was in a safe in the old family home last time I saw it. I’m not sure where I kept it, those many years ago, but apparently it was in plain sight as my brother-in-law took it and via his uncle pawned it.
Well, I was from a small town where everyone knows everyone, and it didn’t take the pawn shop long to put 2 and 2 together and figure out the pawners probably had no business possessing it to pawn. They alerted my father.
And I never would have known any of this–again, since I never wore it–if it weren’t for two things. Once when I was visiting my parents, my father at some point casually mentioned something to the effect of “Oh, by the way, if you want your HS ring, it’s in the safe, and someday I’ll tell you about it–but I had to pay $50 dollars to get it back.”
I never asked what had happened, but after my father died, and I was going thru the safe, I found the pawn ticket, with my BIL’s uncle’s name on it.