Two things set the price of a solid silver chain: how much silver is in it, and how much work goes into forming that silver into a chain. Weight is what varies most across a range like ours — our lightest piece is 13 g and our heaviest 214 g — but a chain is built link by link, and the styles that take the most work cost more even where the weights are close.
Price transparency is unusual in jewellery, which is exactly why it is worth doing. Here is what sits behind the number.
The metal
Sterling silver has a density of roughly 10,3 grams per cubic centimetre. That number does not change, so a chain's weight is set by its style, width and length, and it cannot be reduced without removing metal. There is no clever way to make a wide solid chain that contains less silver than a wide solid chain contains.
Our lightest piece is a 19 cm rope bracelet at 13 g. Our heaviest is a 60 cm Cuban link at 214 g — sixteen times the silver. That range accounts for a great deal of the spread across our prices. Every weight we offer is listed in our chain weight chart.
The making
A chain is built one link at a time, and on a solid chain every link is formed and soldered closed. That is where the manufacturing time goes — not in the metal, which is bought, but in the making.
How much work depends on the style as much as the size. A Cuban link uses heavier links, seated deeply enough into one another to close the gaps, which is slower to form and to finish than an open curb of similar width. A Franco's V-shaped links have to slot together precisely along four flat faces. A rope is laid from twisted strands. These are genuinely different jobs, and the difference shows up in the price of chains that weigh much the same. How each one is built is set out in the four silver chain styles compared.
Part of that work is a fixed cost per piece: setting up, finishing, fitting a clasp, marking, packing. Because it is fixed rather than proportional, it weighs more heavily on a small piece than a large one.
Why two chains of the same width cost differently
Because width does not determine how much metal is in a chain — construction does, and construction decides the work as well.
Our 4,7 mm Franco holds 55 g at 50 cm. Our 6 mm Cuban link holds 49 g. The Franco is the narrower chain and the heavier one, because its densely stacked square links leave almost no air in it, so the two sit at a very similar price despite looking nothing alike.
Run the same comparison the other way and a 6,4 mm curb at 43 g costs less than the 6 mm Cuban link, even though it is wider — it contains 6 g less silver, and its open links are quicker to form. Millimetres are not what you are paying for. Every width we offer is shown to scale if you want to see them beside one another.
The curb's open links are quicker to form than the Cuban's, which are seated deeply enough into one another to close the gaps. Here the curb is the wider chain and the cheaper one.
The rest of the price
- Finishing. Tumbling and polishing, and how far into the links the polish reaches.
- Clasp and assembly. A fixed cost per piece regardless of the chain's size.
- Marking. Every chain stamped 925 and Italy.
- VAT. Included in the prices shown to EU consumers.
- Margin. Real, and smaller than most people assume once the items above are accounted for. We sell direct, so there is no wholesale layer and no retail floor to fund.
What a published weight tells you
A seller who does not publish gram weights is telling you something. On a solid chain the weight is a selling point — it is the number that proves there is metal all the way through. On a hollow one it is a thing to leave out, because the figure gives the game away.
Ours are on every product page, and collected in one place in the weight chart. Whether a chain is solid or hollow is the single biggest thing a stated weight reveals, and it follows from the density: for a given style, width and length there is only one weight a solid chain can be, and a hollow one comes in well under it.
Where the best value sits
If value means silver per euro, the answer is the style rather than the size. Curb gives the most metal for the money across every width we offer, because its links are relatively thin for their width and quicker to form. Cuban link gives the least, because closing those gaps takes heavier links and more work at every stage. Rope and Franco sit between them.
That ordering holds regardless of what the silver market is doing, which is why it is worth knowing. It is a fact about how each chain is built, not a ranking — the Cuban costs more because it takes more metal and more work, which is precisely what people buy it for.
What a price that is too low is telling you
There is a floor under all of this. Silver has a real commodity value, nobody sells below it for long, and the making has to be paid for on top. A chain advertised at dimensions that imply a heavy solid piece, at a price far under what that much sterling is worth, is not what it claims to be — either it is hollow, or it is not sterling at all.