The Nine Rings of Men: The Nazgûl's Rings and Replicas

"Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die." The Nine are the rings that turned their wearers into the Nazgûl, the Black Riders who hunt Frodo from the Shire to the Ford of Bruinen. They are the darkest of the Rings of Power, and the least described: Tolkien tells us what they did, not what they looked like.

For how the Nine fit among the twenty Rings of Power, read how many Rings of Power are there? or go back to the Lord of the Rings rings overview.

The Nine in Tolkien's books

The Elven smiths of Eregion made the Nine, along with the Seven, in the Second Age, with Sauron teaching them in disguise. When Sauron turned on Eregion he took these rings by force and later gave them to nine Men: kings, sorcerers and warriors, three of them great lords of Númenor.

The rings gave them what they wanted. They grew rich and powerful, they could become invisible, and they lived far beyond a mortal span. But each ring was bound to the One, and one by one the bearers faded into the shadow world and became Ringwraiths, wholly under Sauron's control. The chief of them is the Witch-king of Angmar.

By the time of The Lord of the Rings, Sauron keeps the Nine himself. Tolkien never describes the rings individually; he only says that every Ring of Power except the One was set with its own gem. When the One Ring is destroyed the Nazgûl perish with it, and the books do not say what became of their rings.

The Nine on screen

The prologue of Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring shows the nine kings of Men receiving their rings; the wraiths they became appear in the rest of the trilogy. Amazon's The Rings of Power changes the story more than anywhere else: in its second season Celebrimbor forges the Nine last, after the Three, and Sauron reveals that they were made with his own blood. None of that is in Tolkien, where the Nine are made before the Three, by the Elven smiths with Sauron's help.

Nine Rings replicas

Badali Jewelry is the only one of the four retailers we follow that sells licensed rings of the Nine, under its licence from Middle-earth Enterprises. Its Rings of Men are a set of nine different designs, each with its own stone and a name drawn from the story, in sterling silver and cast to order:

• Umbar, with an amethyst, from $139
• Khamûl, with a lab-grown ruby, from $179
• Minas Morgul, with onyx, from $189
• The Haradrim, with a moonstone, from $199
• The Necromancer, with a man-made black fire opal, from $249
• Númenor, with a lab-grown star sapphire, from $299
• Ring of the Nazgûl, with a black cubic zirconia, from $329
• Ring of the Witch-king, with a green cubic zirconia, from $359
• Dol Guldur, from $369

These are Badali's own designs. Because Tolkien gives no description, no version can claim to be accurate to the book. Most of them are made up to US size 20, which helps if you need a large ring.

Wētā Workshop, Jens Hansen and The Noble Collection did not list a ring of the Nine when we checked.

Wearing a Nazgûl ring

These are big signet-style rings: Badali's Ring of the Nazgûl is about 16.6 mm wide and weighs about 20 g. A heavy ring sits differently from a band, so measure the finger you plan to wear it on; our ring size converter and One Ring size guide explain how. For the difference between a licensed ring and a copy, see is this the real One Ring?

The licensed rings of the Nine we track are listed below, cheapest first.