Pawn Shop. Worked out better than the marriages.
What she said.
I tried to pawn the ring and was offered something like $30 (for a $400 ring) because they said they were only interested in the gold and not the diamonds. So, it’s currently sitting in a jewelry box at home. I have no qualms about selling it, but I’d like to get more than $30 for the deal.
Cheap ring.
Bottom of a lake.
I have from an old boyfriend a watch, what looks like an antique mesh gold band and little diamonds. It doesn’t run and someday I plan to take it to a jeweler to have them fix it and also tell me if its worth anything. It’s either valuable if it’s real gold, or worth next to nothing if it’s just gold plate.
When my grandfather died, my grandmother took her wedding set and had the diamonds from it made into a cocktail ring, which she wore on her right ring finger until the day she died. They’d had a very good marriage and that was her way of being able to continue to wear the wedding jewelry, which gave her good memories.
When I married my first wife I weighed 165 pounds. When we divorced 10 years later I weighed 190. After many frustrating attempts to remove the ring intact, I dug tin shears out of the tool box and cut the thing off (cutting through the ring, not the finger, of course). Didn’t throw it away; it’s around somewhere.
Widowed: I’ve contemplated having my rings and his ring made into another piece of jewelry, but I probably will never get around to it.
I took my ring off on September 20th of last year after wearing it for ten and a half years essentially non-stop (with the exception of three days when I had it resized a few years back). I can no longer make out any indent on my finger.
My father was wanting to get my mother a diamond necklace for an anniversary. I had a diamond ring from my first failed marriage that I didn’t want and I was dead broke and needed more than the pawn shop offered to me. I set what I thought was a fair price and my dad bought it from me and had it turned into a necklace for my mother.
I have no idea if she knew where the diamond came from or not.
I had bought it myself so I felt justified in not giving it back to my ex-husband and we were only married a little over a year.
I spent all my money on my wife’s rings and just bought the cheapest gold band for me for the ceremony. I never planned on wearing it. A few weeks later I sold it for scrap. Turns out my wife was pissed. The marriage lasted 20 years anyway.
I have a wedding ring from my second marriage which is in a safe deposit box. I would love to sell it but have no idea how to get a fair price for it.
My dad (a widower) has his and mother’s gold bands on a chain which is pierced into a painting of his. Mother’s ‘engagement’ ring (which is actually an heirloom from her side of the family) is in a safe deposit box.
After my father died my mother had her and my father’s wedding bands made into a new ring for her. She’s worn it on her left ring finger ever since, but it doesn’t really look like a wedding band because of the design, and she had a sapphire added to it. She also took my father’s class rings (high school and college) and had them melted down and recast as matching rings for me and my sisters.
My now-husband and I decided to toss our rings from our starter marriages over the Falls as a ceremonial end to those relationships. It was harder than you’d think, what with the park police roaming about, so we had to wait for them to clear out. I tossed mine in and watched them get swept away.
He did the same, only his band hit a support on the railing with an alarmingly loud CLUNK. No one seemed to notice, at least, and we were rid of the darned things at last.
My mom was appalled when I told her this story, until I reminded her I bought my own rings since my ex wouldn’t (he bought himself power tools with the money he’d set aside for rings) and then was reluctantly okay with it. My kids asked me once where my rings were and I said “I’m not really sure”. True, though.
Not a wedding/engagement ring but I ebay’d a bracelet from an ex-bf that I spent a couple years with.
I had a 3 stone engagement ring that I had reset into earrings (trillion cut) and a (princess cut) solitaire pendant. I wear the earrings every day, but now they are just earrings and not symbols of a failed marriage. I wear the solitaire occasionally. I sold the gold from the bands for scrap and got $28 for them which I put toward the price of the new settings. This was before the current spike in gold prices. 
Not my own ring, but I inherited a simple gold wedding band from a great great uncle that no-one in my family had known personally. I didn’t have any use for it. I tried selling it at a jwellers, but they offered an insulting 10 bucks for it.
In the end, I gave it to my doula. She was still in training, so didn’t have to pay her her fee that would otherwise have been a few hundred dollars. But she also was an apprentice goldsmith, and she told me she loved working with gold and silver that held some meaning for her, instead of precious metals she had just bought wholesale. So I gave her the ring, along with some old silver I had. That gift held much meaning to her as her first doula “payment” and she made something beautiful out of it for herself to wear.