Given most rings have the owner’s name engraved inside, pawning it in the same town is a real genius move. Great story!
I just pulled my ring off to check and after ~47 years of off and on most overnights my name is still legible in there.
I’m not sure if that is a default option. Mine wasn’t, and it isn’t in the “build a ring workshop” section of the Jostens website.
For both of mine it was an optional add-on for IIRC $15ish. And both mine came from Josten. Although that was long, long ago in a land far, far away.
Back in my senior year of high school, instead of a class ring my folks agreed with me and got me a gold and onyx ring that I wore for the next 45 years. At that point I started wearing my father’s ring that it was patterned after.
As a retired teacher of seniors, I always discouraged the buying of rings when the Jostens folks came around. AFAIK, none of my students ever bought one (SoCal public high school.)
I got one when I graduated in 1965; gold and jade. It was stolen in boot camp two years later.
I’ve been wearing my MIT Brass Rat for over 50 years, and no one has ever accused me of showing off. I don’t push it in anyone’s face, though. I did get someone who was writing a story where the ring played a part ask to see mine.
I got mine in 1972, when gold was $35 an ounce, so it was expensive but not crazy.
I have no idea of what a Harvard ring looks like, or if people up there bought them. Other rings seem to all look pretty much the same. The thing I like about mine is that it is distinctive.
I graduated from high school in 1969, and while I think they sold rings no one I knew bought one. My kids graduated in 2000 and 2004, and they were not interested. Nor were they interested in college rings - I don’t think it came up.
They also did our invitations. They were big on upselling all kinds of crap as memorabilia. I bought a ring, but lost it a couple of years later in a move. They were popular in my rural high school. Class of ‘81.
I just remembered my dad had a HS class ring. He graduated in 1958 and his ring is gold and fairly simple - no huge jewel (it isn’t overly large as well), sharp edges or outlandish festoonery which seems common on many class rings. The ones offered when I graduated were more similar to Super Bowl rings than normal, rational jewelry.
question to non-americans:
Are “school-rings” a thing in your country or is it merely a US-thing? (maybe Canada? or Commonwealth)?
I went to school in central Europe (70-80ies) and of course there are no rings - why “of course” you might ask? … b/c you go are assigned (by default) to the (public)school closest to your home, so its similar to the process of assigning your voting local/polling station. … and you wouldn’t wear a ring for the assigned voting locale, either or IRS office 
…
You don’t spend six hours a day five days a week, 39 weeks a year with the folks at the local polling station. Most Americans do not choose the school they attend either. It’s the designated public school for the catchment area they live in.
I doubt if that’s the reason. Although there are some large school systems in the US that don’t have assigned schools for certain grade levels , most do, even if there is also some choice. And lots of public school districts don’t have any choice at all - my grandchildren’s school district has only one high school. If they don’t want to go their, the only option is private.
There is a reason why service academy graduates are called ring knockers. That’s a rare guy. I’ve never known one without one.
I had a class ring. It’s somewhere around here. I barely ever wore it. For the brief time I had a girlfriend in high school she had it on a chain around her neck. IIRC every one I knew got a ring. My daughters are 26 and 24. Neither of them ever brought up wanting a ring. I don’t know if Jostens was in the school pitching it or not.
Fun fact: Josten makes those huge, gaudy, incredibly expensive Superbowl rings.
I went to the same Canadian high school as @Spoons, but class of '98. I have a similar memory – graduation rings were available, but I don’t remember them as being a really big thing.
By my senior year, I was quite fond of my school and might have wanted to get one of these, but I was broke at that time, so they just kind of went off the radar. That said, I don’t know if they contained gold or not.
My vague recollection is that it might mainly have been the jocks that were interested in getting them.
Class of 2000 here, standard suburban middle-class mostly White school on Long Island. I got one, I think many people did, I remember when they gave out the catalogs to all the students. Of course I haven’t worn it in decades and am not even sure where it is now so… Probably still in my childhood bedroom somewhere. Mine definitely wasn’t gold, I’ve never been a fan of gold color, it was some kind of silver. I remember it was a flat onyx stone with a diamond in the middle.
It’s a huge deal at A&M. It’s the rare student that hits whatever the threshold for getting a ring is (it was 95 hours for undergrads when I was in school) and doesn’t go order one. Like I can’t think of anyone I’ve known or heard of who didn’t, and I was a RA for four years, so my sample set is pretty large.
I sometimes think the Aggies are the most gung-ho military of the US service academies, far outstripped the “real” ones.
They even mentioned something about the ring separating the “fish” from the grads. This is quite a few years back, but I think it was like the plebes at West Point.
So, it seems like rings are still at thing at A&M.
That wouldn’t surprise me at all. I’m not military, but we’re as gung-ho as college fans get for sports, so I would imagine it would extend to the cadets and the officers in the military who went to A&M too.
Class of '81. Only cheerleaders and jocks bought those things. I would have been laughed out of my social circle if I was ever seen wearing one.
Although my high school was good, my goal was to get out of it, not remember it with a token. I was going to college, so this wasn’t my last chance for a ring.