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Melania Trump and former-President Donald Trump celebrated their 18th anniversary this week. They married on January 22, 2005, on Trump’s Mar a Largo estate surrounded by celebrities.
Billionaire Donald Trump’s third wedding was an opulent affair. Model Melania wore a couture Christian Dior dress worth $148,000 (£100,000) and there was a five-foot-tall, two-metre-wide cake. It’s no surprise that Melania’s engagement ring and wedding band are similarly splendid.
A jewellery expert exclusively valued the rings for Express and found their value has increased by a whopping £1.9M.
On the day of their wedding, Donald presented Melania with an enormous wedding band to match her already huge engagement ring. The wedding band is made of 15 emerald-cut diamonds. Each weighs 0.86cts and the ring totals 13cts of high-grade diamonds.
Alexandra Michell, a gemologist at Prestige Pawnbrokers said: “In 2005, this ring’s price was £300,000, however, today, this translates to £460,000.”
READ MORE: Melania Trump could ‘take a leaf out of Kate Middleton’s book’ to boost popularity
Her second engagement ring, also from Graff given to her on their 10th wedding anniversary, was upgraded to a mammoth 25cts emerald cut diamond. Alexandra said; “Although it is said that the quality of the stone is not as high as her first ring, it can be assumed that based on the price tag of the first ring, the colour and clarity are still high on the grading scale.
“In 2015, it apparently cost Donald Trump £2,700,000; today this is likely to be £3,300,000.
“In this instance, the price is not as high as the smaller stone, which just goes to show: ‘quality over quantity’ still rings true in the realms of High Jewellery, but stones of top quality and large sizes are harder to come by.”
This makes the value of all three rings an enormous £7.45M.
Melania infamously wore this £3.3M diamond for her official White House portrait. The enormous ring sparked some backlash. At the time The Socialist Party tweeted in response: “How many hungry people could your diamond ring feed?”
One of these rings caused some drama when the former-President claimed he got a discount from the company on the purchase. The billionaire told The New York Times he got a half-off deal on his first engagement ring for Melania.
He said: “Only a fool would say, ‘No thank you, I want to pay a million dollars more for a diamond.’”
However, Graff chairman Laurence Graff denied this ever happened. The company’s CFO Nicholas Paine said: “We don’t sell items for publicity value. He paid for [the ring] in full, and he paid immediately.”
