sports-rings.com

Here is something odd about the ring - when the raiders reached their 5th superbowl and lost to the Bucs in super bowl XXVII they did a ring with 5 diamonds - one for each super bowl appearance including that one. The Bills did the same thing when they reached their 4th in a row. This Bronco ring clearly has 6 football shaped diamonds, yet this was their 7th super bowl appearance. I am very surprised by that. I do think a 7th diamond would have presented a balance issue with the design. where do you putt the odd dimaond? Ridenlow71 - any chance you have more Jostens photos that show the shanks?

Drlec - Thanks!!!! Finally got to see the ring! Glad it's not the same repeating format

Recruiting with lots of bling makes a lot of sense. Great observation, dralec.

Great pictures and posts Dralec. With twitter becoming so popular and college athletes wearing these rings, perhaps the school felt that a ring recognizing the accomplishment of playing in a "National Championship" game would bring nice exposure to their football program and was worth the expense of awarding rings.

do you know who the player is that won both these rings? I did a little research on the 2010 Montreal Alouettes 2010 ring and this amazing picture. Turns out the player is Brandon London who is currently signed with the Alouettes. An amazing fact about the CFL ring pictured above is that the players received their own image on the side of the ring. The only other instance I know of, where a ring featured the image of the player was the LA Lakers 2009 Championship rings.

do you know who the player is that won both these rings?

Great ring! Congratulations!

Rich emailed me back. He's asking good questions and asking for other examples of engravings. Looks like he is keeping an open mind. I have seen some real rings with awful engravings, so I hate to have him take down a ring that could be real. Ugggh I hate salesman sample rings!

It was probably made by Irv Learner. I will let Rich Russert know but perhaps you can let him know too. Rich avoids my calls and seldom removes items from auction until he gets a second or third opinion or until I post on net54baseball.com for that user group to see (that is the most active internet collecting community I have ever seen). Rich thinks I have it out for Irv. I don't. I just hate when unsuspecting people get fake items.

I am lucky enough to own quite a few. Unfortunately they are kept at the bank in a bank vault. Some of the rings are displayed on my web site under the gallery sections. Every ring is shown on the site, even the AFC and NFC rings. I also show some pretty rare presentation boxes on the site. Some of the boxes I own, others I have seen at shows and were too expensive to buy, some were sent to me by email! Not every ring at the site is mine, some were gotten from the internet, or people sending me photos.

I think you bring up great examples, not to mention how some of the college and high school rings are also copied from superbowl or other championship rings. Here's a conspiracy theory - I have no idea if it's true or accurate so it's only conjecture: You mentioned Superbowl 33-36, 4 super bowl rings, all made by Jostens, all basically the same style and format. Perhaps Josten's became too conforming or unwilling to redesign new rings for teams. Perhaps Tampa Bay shook up the ring community and Jostens, by going with Tiffany. You will notice that no two Tiffany rings are identical (or similar). They start from scratch with every one of their team rings. Then after shaking up Jostens, perhaps they learned their lesson because after Tiffany did the Bus XXXVII ring, Jostens made spectacular but very different, mold-breaking New England Patriots rings for Superbowl's XXXVIII and XXXIX. Again, just a theory, but if I'm wrong that's quite a coincidence that Josten's changed up the rings so dramatically.

Yes, I have the other rings. I totally agree, the XIII ring is such a cool ring! I've always wondered if the XIII ring design was influenced by the Cowboys Super Bowl XII ring. The cowboys XII was the first super bowl ring that basically made the entire top of the ring white by blanketing it with small diamonds (and larger ones to designate the two super bowl wins. No disrespect to the Cowboys, the ring picture found on the internet is not scaled to the same size as the Steelers ring. Both rings were probably very similar in size.

I have been checking google every day for ring news and there is no mention of Denver's rings. In this day and age with instagram and twitter I think if the rings were given out we would have seen them by now.

Seattle Seahawks to Receive Super Bowl XLVIII Rings June 19We still don’t know what the ring will look like, and we still don’t know who the manufacturer is, but at least we now know when we’ll find out.

thanks for your kind words, I appreciate it. I love the NHL, NBA and Baseball rings, but I don't have the time to catalog and post those items. Wish I did. Not sure if you saw it, but I did do a gallery of NY baseball rings, at my site. Two sites you may not be aware of that cover the history of rings: http://www.worldseriesrings.net/ and the one below was an incredible compilation of so many rings, but the person (a.k.a. "The Crow") stopped updating the site many years ago. Also, he went with free web hosting so there is a lot of flash-advertisements and poorly behaved malware on the site so be careful. Here is the site (really the best site in the good old days to see every ring)... http://thecrow2131.20m.com/ ** Anyone know of any other good sites for ring news or research? **

Now that's funny! Thanks for your Kind words Karl. Thanks for bringing the cowboy ring to my attention!

Maybe he quoted me around that price, I honestly don't remember. seems like a fair price for all that custom work! Thanks King of Rings!

Were they around $600? I spoke with him a long time ago. I wanted to wear one at the Sports National show and have a shirt saying "I buy rings". Couldn't bring myself to do it (too embarrassing to walk around a show like that). He is amazing, each ring top looks dead on, with diamonds and properly colored stones, and he even does the shanks to perfection!

Okay, ^^^^ he's totally right^^^^^ ......now I wanna know the same thing. What gives? Otherwise, you did an awesome job of pairing the winning and losing awards. Never seen that all in one place before. Nice job. Okay, one other question.........have you ever seen a '72 Redskins NFC ring with a diamond in the center instead of the Indian head? Someone told me once that that was an option but I've never seen it myself or in any photos. Thanks! Karl Hi Karl, Yes, the 1977 Superbowl ring should have white diamonds. The ring shown on the website was either a salesman sample or high quality fake salesman sample. The stars are supposed to be a very dark blue, perhaps the camera and lighting made it look darker. I guess the picture I had was a fake salesman sample. I have replaced the picture with a real ring. Thanks for letting me know! I really appreciate it. here is a real ring, now showing on the web site. this player ring was auctioned off a few years back by Heritage auctions. I went back and checked my records on the 1972 Redskins ring. I have never seen a redskins ring with a center diamond, although I have only seen two real rings. I do know that someone was making fake Red skin salesman sample rings and there is one on ebay now. the one way to tell it's fake besides it being a little smaller than a real ring is the Indian head has less detail My gut feeling is that the Redskins did not offer a diamond option, otherwise the players would have jumped on that. Perhaps it was a fake ring, or perhaps the original owner decided to bling it up and put a diamond in it. Players have been known to modify their rings with real diamonds. I had meet HOF player Heb Adderley who showed me his Packer super bowl II ring. He and some other teammates put their jersey number in diamonds on the top of the ring. It looked really cool. Also a bunch of KC Chiefs put diamonds on their 1966 AFC ring.

There is a complete set of super bowl rings at the Pro Football HOF and another complete set that's part of the traveling NFL experience that's set up in the Super Bowl host city. The NFL corporate headquarters has the 20 foot long custom display with each ring sitting on an individual platform with the corresponding roman numerals. It is a much nicer display than the HOF or NFL experience. If that wasn't enough, the display at the NFL has sliding glass magnifying glasses so the viewer can magnify any ring of their choosing.

Thanks for looking for the real thing for me! My gut feeling is they did not get it wrong and it really is that heavy, but I really have no way of knowing. I saw the replica, but I thought the knockoffs from China were more realistic.

Hi Dralec, I wish I had a 2011 ring. Your assumptions are dead-on and I agree 100% with everything you said. I only have a pictures of the 2011 ring. The only ring I know of, that is in the market place is supposedly with Tim Robins. Did you see the ring and the weight at Tim's websight? He has the size 13 ring and lists it at 92 grams. I tried to buy the ring from Tim but as usual he played games with me. He avoided my phone calls and when I called from an unlisted number he picked up the phone. So I asked who's ring it was, he named someone from the 2007 team who did not get a 2011 ring. We had a falling out, because I emailed a lot of people I knew in the hobby and told them that Tim was avoiding my calls and wasting my time and that he has not changed from his prior days when he lied all day long. Scott Welkowsky added that Tim probably does not have the ring and that's why he avoided my calls and emails (even though I sent like 10 emails and 10 messages) after Tim and I agreed to speak on a given day about purchasing the ring. So, it's possible that Tim did not have the ring and had to rely on bad information. I noticed that the Giants 2007 ring and 2011 rings look similar in physical size so the 2011 ring should be around 72 grams. Scott Welkowsky taught me that the ring makers can hollow out rings and make them physically larger, yet control the weight so perhaps Tiffany did the opposite? Perhaps they packed on more grams than usual, making for a heavier yet smaller ring? Perhaps with some Giant players, being awarded a second ring (2007 and 1011), they wanted to avoid what happened to the Steelers when the XLIII ring dwarfed the XL ring? Hopefully I will acquire one this year and if I do, I'm happy to share the weight with you. Sorry, wish I knew more!

I'm not a big fan of the boxing rings, but I think it's neat that boxers have had rings designed and made for themselves and their trainers, managers and team.

I heard last week that the justice department (or whoever decides these things) rejected the potential sale (just like they did arond 10-15 years ago). So looks like the sale will not be happening. If you want to see side-by-side comparisons of the bronco diamond cutters international ring, and the Jostens ring, and even see the Cowboys Diamond Cutters rings, they are shown on this board on page 47. Looks like the Cowboys shanks were nicer, however, those shanks too, are a ways below the quality produced by Jostens, Tiffany and Balfour. here is the link: http://boards.sportslogos.net/topic/66149-ccslc-championship-ring-thread/page-47

I don't know if Diamond Cutters International is still in business, but their Denver Broncos Super Bowl XXXII ring was incredibly awful. I can never tell if I am looking at a picture of a real one or a cheap fake, because the shanks are an absolute disaster. I thought they did a nice job on the top of the ring, but there is no excuse for the horrible work done on the sides. The following season when the Broncos repeated, they went with Jostens and the shanks were substantially improved.