Beverly

The lord of the rings works behind a nondescript door in a Beverly Hills office building, not far from the UCLA campus where he once sold hair clips and trinkets from a folding table. Jason Arasheben was $28,000 in debt back then, running low on options. Now, eight of the past 11 NBA champions have worn his jewelry on their fingers.

Super Bowl winners have his rings, too — the Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Philadelphia Eagles and the Seattle Seahawks, whose players opened their ornate jewelry boxes at a private team party Thursday night to find the prize every NFL player covets.

The Seahawks ring, large as a child’s fist, is encrusted with 20 carats of white diamonds and blue sapphires. It’s a miniature Lumen Field, featuring the hawk-head logo and two Lombardi Trophies. The top lifts off and converts into a pendant. Inside is a cowhide segment of a game-used football. Twelve flags on the sides nod to the “12th Man” fan base; one is a secret button — push it and the arches pop out to reveal the words “World Champions.”

A look at the Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl ring celebrating their 2025 season championship.

(ONROPE studios; Jason Arasheben)

Even the box performs. Three tiny spotlights shine on the ring as it rotates on a mechanical platform. Each weighs about a third of a pound.

“It’s a memento to a certain period of time,” said Arasheben, who concedes the rings are closer to trophies than wearable jewelry. He competes for ring contracts with Tiffany & Co. and Jostens, both much larger operations. “It celebrates this time that these players and these fans will remember forever.”

His rings appraise for $50,000 to $250,000, though the market can push them higher. In 2024, Kobe Bryant’s 2000 Lakers ring sold at auction for $927,000, the highest price ever paid for an NBA title ring, topping Bill Russell’s 1957 ring at $705,000.

Beverly Hills jewler Jason Arasheben is

(Ric Tapia / For The Times)

NFL franchises typically order two or three times what NBA, NHL or MLB teams request — as many as 3,000 rings in four quality tiers. Lower-level employees might get cubic zirconia instead of diamonds. A limited number of fan versions are available at smaller scale and lower price. Arasheben always builds two extra into his contract so each of his sons can have one.

A career in luxury jewelry was never the plan. He grew up in Granada Hills and Calabasas; his Iranian father and Norwegian mother envisioned a doctor, lawyer or engineer. At UCLA, he found himself more interested in bars than books.

“I was $28,000 in debt because I enjoyed going out far too much, like every other college student,” he said.

One day he tagged along with a friend to the wholesale district downtown and had a flash of inspiration. She was buying plastic hair clips and silver trinkets by the dozen. He figured he could sell them to girls on campus.

He pitched the idea of a folding table to the university, which agreed when he offered to split the profits. He bought $400 worth of tchotchkes. One table became two, then six locations across Southern California campuses.

Then came the motherlode. He built acrylic display cases holding 30 to 40 pieces and drove from Agoura Hills to San Diego, stopping at every nail salon he could find, splitting the profits with owners who let him put a case on the counter. By his senior year, he had agreements with roughly 350 salons and was clearing $25,000 to $30,000 a month.

After college, as a regular on the L.A. nightclub scene, Arasheben built relationships with professional athletes and celebrities. He would go home and sketch chain designs for players he’d met, knowing nothing about the jewelry industry.

“Finally, an NBA player said, ‘Why don’t you come to my hotel room tomorrow before we play the Lakers and bring all the jewelry you have? I’m going to buy something from you,’” said Arasheben, describing an encounter with the late Anthony Mason.

Problem was, he had no jewelry. He spent the night cutting pictures from magazines and downloading images to create a makeshift catalog, then promised Mason a custom $40,000 necklace. Mason put down $20,000.

Arasheben went downtown, knocked on doors and found somebody to make it for $37,000. A new business was born, growing by word of mouth. Eventually he had four employees and a small office downtown, outsourcing most of his work.

Through his friendship with Jim Buss, son of owner Jerry Buss, Arasheben landed the contract to make the Lakers’ 2009 championship ring. It was a mad scramble. He and his employees slept in sleeping bags on the factory floor the final two weeks of production.

“We delivered the very last player ring 20 minutes before the ceremony began,” he said. “The ring ceremony was on national television, and can you imagine if they had to announce the rings weren’t ready? My career would have been over before it started.”

He made the Lakers ring in 2010, too, and five years later — through relationships with several Golden State players — produced four championship rings for the Warriors.

Tom Brady saw LeBron James’ ring during the 2020 offseason and convinced the Buccaneers to go with Arasheben.

A lot of Arasheben’s rings have James Bond elements such as secret compartments or special elements. The top comes off the miniature SoFi Stadium on the Rams ring, for instance, and the field below is made of a melted-down patch of the actual artificial turf. The World Series ring of the Texas Rangers features a tiny circle of leather from a game-used baseball.

He first incorporated a special feature in the 2018 Warriors ring, when a star player objected to a blue face and wanted white, only weeks from delivery. Arasheben devised a mechanism allowing the face to switch colors.

Jason Arasheben poses with some of the sports championship rings he has crafted over the years.

(Ric Tapia / For The Times)

“We started getting a lot of championship ring contracts after that,” he said. “Because we took it to a new level and showed some ingenuity. We wanted to be innovative.”

Push a button on the Eagles’ ring and wings pop out on the sides. Arasheben came up with that idea while shopping for a Buzz Lightyear toy for his nephew.

Buzz, too, has wings that pop out.

“I thought, ‘I can do that for the Eagles, but with amazing gold and diamonds,’” he said.

He will put a proposal together to make the medals for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Then there’s the one that got away.

“We lost out on the L.A. Dodgers,” Arasheben said. “They went with a company based in Canada instead of the hometown team, which broke my heart. But you know, that’s part of the business. You take your lumps.

“But I’ll still pitch. Every year, I pitch.”