Cremation jewellery: what it costs, what fits, and which ones leak
Every way to wear somebody, from a $7 steel cylinder to a $15,000 diamond. The same small idea at wildly different prices.
There is a moment in the arrangement room when someone slides a velvet tray across the table. Little silver hearts, tiny cylinders, a glass teardrop or two, each one holding a pinch of whoever you are there about. It is a lovely idea, and the prices on that tray were set by someone who knows you won’t compare.
So we compared. Below is every kind of jewellery that holds or comes from a person’s remains, what each one actually costs from named sellers, how much ash it uses, and how it fails. Wearing them is a good, old, normal thing to want. The Victorians wore their dead’s hair in brooches. You just shouldn’t pay ten times over for it.
First: how little this uses
An adult’s cremated remains fill an urn of roughly 200 cubic inches, which is about 3.3 litres, or around 665 teaspoons. A typical pendant holds about a quarter of a teaspoon. Spirit Pieces states that figure for its fill-at-home pendant, and Memory Glass uses a quarter-teaspoon scoop per glass piece. That is well under a tenth of one percent of the person.
Two things follow from that:
- Jewellery is never instead of an urn. Ninety-nine point something percent of them still needs a home. Our urn buying guide covers that part.
- Everybody can have one. There is enough for a pendant for every grandchild and it will make no visible difference to the urn. If the family is fighting over who gets them, the answer is usually “all of you”.
The five kinds, side by side
| Kind | Price we found | Ash used | Wait |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fill-it-yourself pendantHollow, screw closure. You fill it. | $7 to $60stainless or sterling | About ¼ teaspoon | Days (shipping) |
| Ash in glassA studio fuses ash into glass. | $195 to $400per piece | ¼ tsp to 1 tbsp | 2 to 9 weeks |
| Ash in resinAsh set in clear resin. | $59 to $8,620the metal decides it | ⅛ tsp to 1 tsp | 1 to 8 weeks |
| Fingerprint jewelleryTheir print in metal. No ash. | $295 to $1,795sterling to 14k gold | None | About a week |
| Memorial diamondLab-grown, partly from ash carbon. | $1,400 to $40,500by carat; Lonité 3-carat top | 4 oz to 1 lb | 3 to 12 months |
1. The pendant you fill yourself
A small hollow cylinder, heart or teardrop with a threaded plug. You unscrew it, funnel in a pinch of ash, screw it shut. This is the cheapest option and, for most people, the right one.
What it should cost
On the day we checked, OneWorld Memorials (the company that used to trade as Perfect Memorials) listed a stainless pendant at $6.99 on sale and sterling silver pendants from $25.99 to $59.99. Spirit Pieces sells a stainless fill pendant for $29. Funeral.com, meanwhile, listed a small sterling silver heart pendant at $337.95, and its cheapest stainless piece at $173.95. They are not identical pieces. They do the identical job.
The one we have handled in detail is a plain stainless cylinder that costs about the price of lunch. Our ash pendant review covers what fits, how to fill it without spilling, and why the chain is the part to upgrade.
Read the metal line twice
- Stainless steel is the practical choice for daily wear. It doesn’t tarnish or react to sweat.
- Sterling silver is fine if you will polish it now and then.
- “Gold” usually isn’t. The gold pendants we found at OneWorld were 14K gold-plated bronze at $144.99 to $159.99. Plating wears through. If you want solid gold, expect to ask for a quote: Funeral.com says “contact us” and none of the sellers we checked published a price for a solid-gold fill pendant.
The seal, and why none of them are waterproof
This is where cheap and expensive pendants fail in exactly the same way. A screw thread on its own works loose with movement. A rubber or silicone O-ring under the plug keeps out dust and sweat, but it can pinch or wear. So the sellers who are honest about it tell you two things:
- Glue the threads. Funeral.com ships its sterling heart pendant with glue in the fill kit, and Legacy Touch tells buyers to put two or three drops on the inner thread. Do it. Once it’s set, the pendant is closed for good, which is the point. If you might ever want to move the ashes into something else, decide that before you glue.
- Take it off in water. Funeral.com’s product page says to remove it before showering or swimming. Legacy Touch says not to submerge its pendants, showers and pools included. Its own closure guide says to leave the rubber gasket in. A listing that says “waterproof” is promising more than the hardware can.
The worst-case failure isn’t dramatic. It is a pendant that slowly unscrews over a year and is empty when you finally look. Glue it and keep it dry, and it won’t be.
Pendant and the rest of the kit
Stainless Steel Cremation Ash Pendant
The one we reviewed. Screw-top steel cylinder with a funnel. Holds a pinch, survives daily wear, and costs a fraction of the velvet-tray version.
Pendant and the rest of the kit
Marble-Finish Keepsake Urn Set of 4, with funnel
For the rest of the split: one small keepsake each, so nobody has to own the big urn to have some of them.
Affiliate link: if you buy through it we earn a commission, you pay the same price. See ourdisclosure.
2. Ash in glass
You send a glass studio a small amount of ash and it fuses it into a bead, heart, orb or pendant. The ash shows as a pale swirl or speckle. These are made by hand and they are often genuinely beautiful. They are also glass, so a dropped pendant on a tiled floor is a real risk. Ask what the studio does if one breaks.
- Artful Ashes (Seattle): $225 for a first heart, orb, starfish or paw print, $185 for each extra one, and $195 for an angel-wings pendant. It asks for about a tablespoon of ash per piece and takes about 8 to 9 weeks. Shipping one piece costs $80 if you want the unused ashes back, $34 if you don’t.
- Memory Glass (California): pendants $250, touchstones $270, orbs and hearts $400. It uses a scoop of about a quarter teaspoon per piece and quotes 2 to 4 weeks.
- Spirit Pieces (Texas): asks for half a teaspoon or less per piece, about 6 weeks, and $15 to $50 to ship the unused ashes back. Some of its glass pieces start at $59. Many of its listings are resin rather than glass, so check which one you are buying.
Send only what they need. Every studio asks for a small amount. Measure it out at home and keep the rest, rather than posting the whole urn and paying to have most of it sent back.
3. Ash in resin
The ash is mixed into clear resin and set into a ring or pendant, so it is visible and can never spill. That is also the catch: once it is set, it is not coming out. The metal around it is what sets the price.
- Close By Me works only in sterling and solid 14k gold. Its 10mm dome necklace was $280 in sterling and $910 in 14k rose gold; its clover ring $340 in sterling and from $1,430 in gold. It asks for a teaspoon of ashes. Turnaround is 1 to 2 weeks for in-stock pieces and up to about 8 weeks for ones that need casting.
- Spirit Pieces sells resin and stone ash rings from $59 to $489, typically asking for an eighth of a teaspoon.
Resin is a plastic. It can yellow, scratch and cloud with age, especially in sunlight. That is true of resin generally, so ask the maker what it does about it. In a ring that gets knocked about every day, it will show wear sooner than metal.
4. Fingerprint jewellery (no ashes needed)
Not cremation jewellery at all, but often what people actually want. It is their thumbprint, engraved into metal. Legacy Touch’s sterling pendants were $295, sterling lockets $395 and solid 14k gold pendants $1,495. It needs a clear print, and once there has been a cremation the only prints left are the ones somebody already took. So if this appeals, say so early and ask the funeral home to take prints before anything else happens.
5. Memorial diamonds
The far end of the aisle. A lab-grown diamond made partly from carbon extracted from the ashes, starting around $1,400 for a quarter carat and reaching $12,999 to $15,000 for one carat at the best-known brands. How much of the person is actually in the stone is a genuinely open question. We gave it its own page: what ash diamonds cost and what you are really buying.
How to choose without getting fleeced
- Decide how it will be worn. Every day, in the shower, at the gym: stainless fill pendant, glued. On good days: glass or a precious-metal piece. Never, just kept in a drawer: a keepsake urn is cheaper and holds more.
- Price the metal, not the moment. A sterling fill pendant from $26 and the same idea at $338 are not different degrees of love. One of them has a funeral retailer’s margin on it.
- You don’t have to buy it through the funeral home. None of this has to be bought at the arrangement table. Under the FTC Funeral Rule they can’t even charge you a fee to handle an urn you bought elsewhere.Your rights, in full.
- Ask what happens to unused ashes before you post any to a studio, and ask what it costs to get them back.
- Wait if you can. The ashes keep. Nothing on this page gets more expensive if you decide in six months instead of six days.
For pets
Everything above works for a dog or a cat, and there is more than enough ash. An average cat’s remains come to about ten cubic inches, which is over a hundred quarter-teaspoon pendants. Artful Ashes makes a paw-print glass piece. How much ash comes back, by body weight, is onhow much ash a pet makes. Every other option for them is on what to do with your pet’s ashes.
Wearing them can be a real comfort, and so can putting them on a shelf and buying nothing at all. If the shopping is standing in for something heavier, our support page lists people to talk to, for people and for pets.
Sources: published prices, ash requirements, turnaround and care instructions from OneWorld Memorials, Funeral.com (product pages and its guide to pendant closures), Spirit Pieces (product listings and FAQ), Legacy Touch (pendant listings and urn closure guide), Artful Ashes (order page), Memory Glass (product pages and FAQ) and Close By Me (FAQ and listings). FTC consumer guide to the Funeral Rule. Checked 2026-10-13. Prices change often in this category; confirm before you order.