Why it feels like you’re getting less for more
We get it, buying fine jewellery now feels a lot more like you’re getting something very small and light for quite a lot of money. The 9ct gold bracelet that cost £50 when you bought it 3 years ago is now - £120? Really? Are jewellerybox price gouging, taking advantage of expectations of increased pricing after the pandemic and just never reducing them so we can make lots of profit? So many businesses of all types have done this, especially the larger, private-equity backed ones. We’re all paying more for everything and earning the same amount.
Here's the reality - since the pandemic, jewellerybox has shrunk down considerably; if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have survived. Staff numbers, salary cuts, salary freezes, a reduction in warehouse space, reducing the amount of stock we hold, cutting all sorts of staff benefits, cutting website costs - everything was on the chopping block. We did this while keeping our warehouse staff on the London Living wage - which understandably has increased during this time because everything has got more expensive. They were the only staff members who got pay rises. We’re not looking for sympathy when we say this, but what we are saying is: we are not making big profits. Our owner/CEO drives an old Mitsubishi Spacestar. Our directors regularly answer customer service calls and emails, pick and pack orders and work in our jewelling workshop.
Gold has increased in price by around 250% since 2018 (And don’t get us started on Silver)
Jewellerybox sits at the lower end of the fine jewellery market - we believe in the value and prestige of real gold and real sterling silver, but at a price that people can afford. This has been a harder and harder ideal to sit behind. The market as a whole has seen a bigger focus on ‘waterproof’ jewellery - items that cost the same as ours but are made from Stainless Steel, a much cheaper metal that has much less intrinsic value. There’s a lot of profit in that. Our jewellery isn’t meant to be worn in the sea in the same way that you wouldn’t wear your best outfit in the sea.
Our jewellery isn’t meant to be worn in the sea in the same way that you wouldn’t wear your best outfit in the sea.
In 2016, the price of a gram of 9ct gold was around £11. A gram of gold is enough for a chain - something like this - just so you can visualise it:
That same gram of gold in January of 2026 cost £42 per gram. Right now, it's around £40 per gram. Let's look at that necklace. In August 2018, we sold one for £41. At that time, 9ct gold was around £11.30 per gram.
One thing to be aware of is that doesn’t mean the necklace costs us £11.30 - far from it! We buy this 1g of gold as a necklace - a skilled person had to make that, and send it to us - and they had to make a profit too. Then on top of that, we have to store it, photograph it, put it on our website, market it, pay Google to show it, pay for our staff’s comfort and wellbeing, pay our staff to pick it and pack it and pay Royal Mail to send it to you. We’re not complaining, these are the costs of running a business, but we are saying that we don’t pay the gold price per gram for our products - no one does.
Where your £135 actually goes
A rough, illustrative breakdown for a 0.9g solid 9ct gold Singapore chain at today's gold price
Illustrative only — rounded estimates to show proportions, not our accounts. Every item is different; VAT is 20% of the price and goes straight to HMRC.
With that in mind, by 2024, we were selling this necklace for £70. At that point, 9ct gold costs around £19.50 per gram. The price of gold increased around 70% since we sold it in 2018. Our price increased by exactly 70% too.
The price of gold increased around 70% since we sold it in 2018. Our price increased by exactly 70% too.
Today we sell that necklace for £135. 1g of 9ct gold costs around £40. Since 2018, that’s around a 250% increase in gold price. Our price during the same period? Went from £41 -> £135 - that is a 229% increase. We absorbed some of that cost instead of passing it onto the customer, we’re making less money on that item.
Silver is a similar story: in 2016, a gram of sterling silver was 38p, in Jan 2026 it was around £2 - over 5 times the price. Currently it sits at £1.45.
In 2016, a gram of sterling silver was 38p, in Jan 2026 it was around £2 - over 5 times the price.
This is not a complaint at precious metal prices - those just happen, like the weather.
What we want to put across is: We know that what you’re buying for £50 feels lighter than you feel it should - £50 got you a lot more gold even just 2 years ago! We want you to know we’re not making any more money from this increase. Our margins are thin. We’re not trying to hide the size of things - we put real dimensions on all our pieces, most have shots on models, size guides with images on people and real measured weights of metal. If you feel it’s too light for the price - do return it! We'd rather we had happy, satisifed customers. All we want YOU to know is, we’re giving you the best price we can possibly give.
Is this the case for everyone?
Yes, but there are some caveats. There is only one gold price - it’s a publicly traded commodity that goes up and down based on lots of factors - so in that sense, everyone is sensitive to it, big companies and small ones alike.
However, bigger companies can stockpile gold and silver - if they think the price might go up they can make sure they buy a lot of it. That way, they can dilute some of the costs. But even they can’t really avoid raising prices in the long term, no one will have had the foresight to buy tons of stock in 2016 in order to sell it in 2026 at 2016 prices (plus, in doing that it could even effect the overall gold price!). But, if they predicted January 2026 peak, they could have bought accordingly to avoid such a sharp spike in prices. Even a small company like us can do that to an extent - we have items in stock that we bought when metal was cheaper, which we can sell cheaply until we have to replenish that stock at a much higher price.
The other side of this is, at the higher end of the market, consumers are paying for the brand, the experience, the prestige. A 9ct gold item that costs say £500 but only has a couple grams of gold in it is much less sensitive to gold price changes because much less of the cost is made up of the price of gold. The company could sell at the same price, but take less profit and customers would not notice any difference.
So, yes it is the case for all retailers, but price increases might happen at different times for different products, and at the higher end of the market, it has less effect.
What are we doing about it?
We’re going to keep doing what we’ve always tried to do: sell real precious-metal jewellery for the best price we can.
That doesn’t mean our prices won’t go up. If gold or silver becomes more expensive and we have to replenish stock at a higher cost, sometimes our prices have to increase too. But we’re not going to use rising gold prices as an excuse to increase prices by more than we need to. If our costs come down, we’ll respond to that too.
We’re also not going to quietly replace gold and sterling silver with cheaper materials while charging you the same price. There’s absolutely a place for stainless steel and plated jewellery, but that’s not what jewellerybox was built around. We want to keep real gold and real sterling silver affordable to as many people as we can.
And we’ll keep being upfront about what you’re buying. You’ll find actual dimensions on our product pages, measured weights wherever we can provide them, photographs on real people and size guides designed to give you a realistic idea of how a piece will look when it arrives.
Most importantly, if something arrives and you think that’s smaller or lighter than I expected for £50, send it back. We don’t want you keeping something you’re disappointed with.
We can’t control what happens to the price of gold and silver. What we can control is how fairly we respond to it - and we’ll keep trying to make sure as much of your money as possible is going towards the jewellery you’re actually buying.
Finally - always remember that no company will sell real gold or silver at a loss. If anyone is selling items that are below the price (or very close to - allowing for the cost of manufacture, and running the business) the price of gold or silver, you can be fairly sure it's too good to be true.