6 Differences Between Good and Bad Quality of Jewelry that factories may not tell you.

Trading off between quality and prices is a hard decision. Therefore, customers should know many vital aspects about quality before deciding to reduce prices. However, several factories choose to not inform customers about quality because they just want to offer the lowest prices as much as possible. Here are some interesting facts about quality.  

1. Quality of Polishing

Although polishing seems to be a simple process, it is difficult to master because just only a little carelessness can make a huge difference. Let the flower below be an example. The white areas, which a polishing tool cannot access, reflect a poor result of polishing. Therefore, polishing is a vital measurement to differentiate high-quality jewelry from low-quality ones.   

Polishing techniques also play significant roles in quality. As you can see a comparison below between hand polishing and mass polishing, two methods create different results: elegant mirror-look surfaces and plain ones. Just only some kinds of fragile jewelry, such as thin chain necklaces, are the exceptions for the hand-polishing technique.

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2. Defects on Surfaces

The orange-surface defect is very common to be found. Even though there are various types of defects, almost all of them come from a casting process. Thus, choosing a casting factory is an essential task and is the top concern as it can signify the quality outcome of your final jewelry. The casting factory that you choose should be established for a long period of time, since the more experience it has, the higher possibility it doesn’t make defects.   

(Thank you for the picture of defects from ganoksin.com)

3. Quality of Material

In order to export jewelry to Europe, which requires the strictest standard, manufacturers need to comply with the safety law. It is very important to ask a supplier for a substance test, sources of raw material, or reliable certifications. Therefore, customers can ensure that sensitive people and children will be safe from dangerous substances, such as lead and nickel while wearing jewelry.   

4. Quality of Structure

On many occasions, suppliers or customers themselves want to press the cost as much as possible. One popular way to do so is to reduce the silver weight by make jewelry thinner. Reducing the thickness can reduce the cost, but too much reduction creates poor quality. One obvious example can be seen in chain necklaces, in which chains are thin and their joints are weak. These weak necklaces are easy to be broken, but factories can solve these problems by welding the joints and increasing the thickness. However, solving problems like these will definitely incur additional costs, which many factories try to avoid to look competitive as much as possible in terms of price.   

5. Consistent Quality

Many factories try to reduce the costs by eliminating their quality control departments, but doing so will result in inconsistent quality, which means customers will find high-quality jewelry mixed with low-quality ones in the same lot. Thus, it is a wise choice to make sure that the factory you choose has a “strict” quality control department. 

6. Plating Issues

Many factories don’t tell their customers that some kinds of jewelry should be plated, such as crescent earrings below containing several small areas that a polishing tool cannot reach, so that they require plating to make those unreachable dim areas look bright.