In economics, price is supposed to reflect value. In jewellery - and in most luxury - that relationship runs backwards.
People don't pay more because something is worth more. They decide something is worth more because they paid more. The price tag isn't the result of value. It's part of what creates value.
This isn't irrationality. It's a function of how humans construct meaning. A ring bought for CA$60 at a market stall can be beautiful and sentimental. A ring bought for CA$4,000 carries something additional - a weight of intention, a record of sacrifice, a signal about how seriously the purchase was taken.
Anthropologists call this "costly signalling." The cost isn't incidental. It's the point. An expensive gift communicates something that a cheap gift cannot, regardless of how the objects compare on any objective dimension.
This is why the two-months-salary guideline (invented by De Beers, not ancient custom - see the full story) had such sticking power. It didn't just tell people how much to spend. It told them what spending that much would mean - that you were serious, that this person was worth it, that you'd thought about it.
The uncomfortable truth is that we are moved by numbers. We feel differently about things that cost more, even when we know the psychology. Even economists, who understand all of this in theory, are not immune in practice.
The question isn't whether to engage with price as meaning - most people will, instinctively. The question is whether to do it consciously, on your own terms, rather than on terms set by someone else's marketing campaign.
