Curb Chains   Figaro Chains   Rope Chains   Mariner Chains   Box Chains

White Gold Curb Chains   White Gold Figaro Chains   White Gold Rope Chains

You’ve picked the perfect gold chain. But how can you know you picked the most competitively priced chain?

There are a few simple guidelines that will give you the confidence to know you purchased the your gold chain at the right price, every time.

Gold Chain prices are based on 3 main factors listed below:

Once you have a firm understanding of these 3 points, especially the weight of a gold chain and the price per gram, you will never again over-pay for a gold chain.

2 other factors that you can also consider are:

At Apples of Gold Jewelry, it is our goal to educate you on how to effectively purchase gold jewelry, because we are confident that our prices are not only reasonable, but lower than most other jewelry stores, including our competitors online.

Each item of jewelry, including gold chains, weighs a certain amount. Gram weights are the standard unit of measurement for gold jewelry. Jewelers use finely tuned scales to weigh items of jewelry in order to determine their gold value.

Always find out the gram weight of the chain you are purchasing. This will not only help you determine the value and price of a gold chain, but it will also give you a sense of the size, depth, and substantive qualities of a chain.

We sometimes even see jewelers who publish their gold chain weights within a range of gram weights. For example, they may list a gold chain as “8.0 – 15.0 grams”. This is a significant difference for this size of a chain! Although gram weights are always approximate for gold jewelry, and gold chains in particular, the difference should be no more than 2%-3% on average. The difference between 8 to 15 grams, for example, is almost 50% and that is unacceptable.

Once you know the gram weight of your chain with 2-3% room for error or variance, you have the 1^st step of determining if you are getting a value for your money.

The next step is simple. Once you know the gram weight of your gold chain, you need to determine what the “price per gram” is. To do this, you simply take the price of the chain and divide that by the gram weight.

Example: If your chain is priced at $575.00 and the gram weight is 25.0 grams. Divide $575 by 25.0 and you will get $23.00. This means that you are paying $23.00 for every 1 gram of gold in your gold chain.

You now will have a comparison basis for deciding to purchase your gold chain from one jewelry store over another—at least as far as price is concerned.

In another example, if a gold chain weighs 10.0 grams and is priced at $300.00. $300 / 10.0 = $30.00. This means that you are paying $30.00 per gram for your gold chain -- a lot more per gram than our example above at $23 per gram. 

The price per gram will vary based on several factors, including the labor intensity of the particular chain, the price of raw gold (which as a commodity will shift daily), and the amount that your particular jeweler has decided to mark up your gold chain.

Metal types and colors will cause a shift in the price per gram of your chain. For example, white gold tends to be more expensive than yellow gold, as does two-tone gold. The reasons for this are mainly because of the added time and labor that a gold chain manufacturer incurs in producing white gold vs. yellow gold. Other reasons include such processes as rhodium plating for white gold and other manufacturer processes that increase the cost of production.

Another example is hand-made gold chains vs. machine-made chains. Your standard Figaro gold link chain, although typically of high quality, is not as expensive as an individually made, hand-made or hand-polished chain. Hand-made chains are, of course, higher quality—but that is not to say that machine-made chains are poor quality. It is like comparing a Cadillac to a BMW, for lack of a better example. Both are solid, high quality automobiles, but one is slightly known to be higher in quality and also slightly more expensive as a result.

These are labor costs handed down from manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer and ultimately to the consumer. Labor costs in jewelry tend to stay the same, or are more stable than the constantly shifting price of raw gold materials, except when there are increases in the cost of living.

Gold is a precious metal and a traded commodity, and therefore, is subject to daily price fluctuations. As gold increases in value, so will the “price per gram” of your gold chain or other jewelry. There were times when we sold gold chains for about $10.00 - $11.00 per gram. This was at the turn of the century. As of year end 2007, our typical gold chain prices are approx. $22-$23 per gram, depending on the shifting price of gold. We have observed many other jewelry stores offering gold chains for between $30 - $35 per gram (between 40% to 50% higher than Apples of Gold Jewelry for the same gold chain).

When comparing prices, it is not necessarily correct to compare what gold chains sold for 5 or 10 years ago, but what other jewelers are selling the same gold chain for today.

Once you have the tools to compare the gram and the price per gram of your gold chain, you can more readily “comparison shop” and be confident that you are getting the best deal! Our goal at Apples of Gold Jewelry is to give you the best deal for the same high quality product.

Related Article:

Rising Price of Gold and Retail Jewelry