Of everything you'll ever buy in gold, a plain wedding band is the one you can price almost to the dollar before you walk in the door. No diamonds to appraise, no setting to complicate things — just a solid loop of gold. That simplicity is your advantage, and most people never use it.
Here's how to shop for a wedding band the way someone who works with gold would: by the numbers.
At a Glance
- A plain wedding band is the easiest gold purchase to price-check — no stones, simple construction.
- A fair price comes down to three numbers: weight, karat, and the live gold rate.
- Luxury names charge a real premium for the brand, not the gold.
- If a seller won't show you the gram weight, you can't verify the price — so ask.
- You can do the math yourself: weight × the per-gram rate for that karat, plus a fair making fee.
The Simplest Thing a Jeweller Makes
A wedding band is about as basic as fine jewellery gets. No stones to set, no prongs, no pavé — just metal shaped into a ring. Ask anyone who buys back gold and they'll tell you the same thing: of all the pieces people bring in, plain bands are the easiest to value, because the price is almost entirely the metal, plus a little labour.
Which means a fair price isn't a mystery. It's a calculation — and you can do it yourself.
The Three Numbers That Set a Fair Price
No matter the shop, the tag, or the name on the box, the real value of a gold band comes down to three things.
Weight, in grams. Gold is sold by weight, full stop. A heavier band holds more gold and is worth more; a thin one is worth less, however it's styled. Most bands run about 2–4 grams for a narrow women's ring and 5–8 grams for a wider men's one.
Karat, or purity. This tells you how much of that weight is actually gold. 14k is 58.3% gold, 18k is 75%, 22k is 91.7%. Higher karat means more gold per gram — a higher value, a warmer colour, and a slightly softer metal.
The live gold rate. Gold trades on a global market that moves every day. As of writing it's around $195 CAD a gram for pure gold. Any honest price is built on that day's number, not one from six months ago.
Put them together and you have the gold value of the band: the weight, multiplied by the per-gram rate for that karat. Add a fair fee for making it, and that's what a band should cost. Everything above that line is paying for something other than gold.
Do the Math Yourself
Say you're looking at a 6-gram 14k band. At 58.3% gold and roughly $195 a gram for pure gold, the metal works out to about $115 per gram of finished ring — so around $680 of gold in the piece. A simple band like that should cost that, plus a modest making fee.
If the price tag says $1,800, you're not paying for gold anymore. You're paying for something else — and you deserve to know exactly what.
Why the Big Names Cost More
Walk into a luxury house — a Cartier, a Birks — and a plain gold band can run several times the value of the gold in it. That premium is real. You're paying for the name, the boutique, the heritage, the little branded case it comes in. For some people that's genuinely worth it, and there's nothing wrong with choosing it.
Just be clear about the decision you're making: you're buying a brand that happens to be made of gold, not gold that happens to carry a brand. Those are two different purchases at two very different prices.
The Harder Problem: When You Can't See the Weight
Trickier is the middle of the market — the mall chains and familiar names where a plain band carries a high price and no gram weight anywhere on the tag. Somewhere like Kay is a fair example: you'll see the style, sometimes the karat, but rarely the actual weight of gold.
That's the catch. If you don't know the weight, you can't run the numbers, which means you can't tell whether a price is fair or twice what it should be. A missing weight isn't proof of anything on its own — but an unknown tends to work in the seller's favour, not yours. So ask for it. A jeweller pricing a band fairly has no reason to keep the number to themselves.
Four Questions to Ask Before You Buy
Wherever you're shopping, these four questions will tell you what a band is really worth:
- What's the gram weight?
- What karat is it, exactly — 14k, 18k, 22k? (Not "gold-tone" or "gold-filled," which aren't solid gold at all.)
- What gold rate are you pricing from today?
- What am I paying for beyond the gold itself?
If the answers come easily, that's a good sign. If they get vague — especially about the weight — that tells you something too.
Where We Come In
This is the whole reason Bijouterie Minted exists. We make solid gold wedding bands to order in Montreal and price every one by weight: the grams of gold, the karat you choose, that day's live market rate, and a single flat making fee. The full breakdown sits on the page before you buy, weight included — because we come from a family that's spent generations around gold, and hiding the number was never how it was done.
If you want a wedding band whose price you can check yourself, that's exactly what we make. Have a look at our wedding bands, or see how our pricing works.
