Buying Jewelry in the USA: The Complete 2026 Guide

Twelve of these country guides exist on this site and the United States was never one of them, which is odd, because it is where most of our orders go. The reason it was left until last is that the American market is the hardest one to write about honestly. Almost everything a buyer assumes is federal law is actually either a state rule, an industry convention, or a Federal Trade Commission guideline with no criminal penalty attached.

This is the hub for the American market. Each section below is short on purpose; the pieces that go deeper are linked as they publish through September.

The five differences, with numbers

What	In the United States	The number that matters
Hallmarking	Voluntary. No assay office. A quality stamp must be accompanied by the applier's registered US trademark.	10 karat — the legal floor for calling something “gold”
Import duty	Every parcel is a dutiable import. The de minimis exemption is suspended indefinitely by regulation.	$0 — the duty-free floor, down from $800
Sales tax	Set by state and often by county and city on top. No national rate, no VAT.	5 states with no statewide sales tax: AK, DE, MT, NH, OR
Ring sizes	Numeric scale, quarter and half steps. Not letters, not ISO circumference.	2.55mm of circumference per full size
Return rights	No general federal right to change your mind. The seller's stated policy is the contract.	30 days — the FTC default shipping deadline if none is stated

1. There is no American assay office

In the United Kingdom a ring above a weight threshold must be sent to an assay office and physically tested before it can legally be described as gold. The United States has no equivalent. Nothing is tested by the state before sale.

What exists instead is the National Gold and Silver Stamping Act of 1906, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. Its logic is not “prove it” but “sign it”: if you apply a quality mark such as 14K or 925, you must also apply your own registered US trademark next to it, so the claim is traceable to a named party. The Act also fixes how far off the mark you are allowed to be — for gold with no solder in the tested part, three parts per thousand; with solder, seven. For sterling silver, four parts per thousand without solder and ten with.

Two consequences follow for a buyer. A stamp is a claim, and an unstamped piece is not necessarily worse than a stamped one — it may simply have no registered trademark behind it. And the FTC's karat floor of 10K means anything below that cannot be sold in America as karat gold at all, which is why 9K, common in Britain and Australia, is effectively absent from the US market.

2. The $800 duty-free floor is gone

This is the change that dates every older article about importing into America, including some of ours. For decades, Section 321 let a shipment worth $800 or less enter the United States free of duty. That exemption was suspended for all countries on 29 August 2025 by executive order, and on 24 June 2026 US Customs and Border Protection published interim final rules making the suspension indefinite as a matter of regulation rather than policy.

In practical terms: an order shipped from our bench in Surat to an address in the United States is now a formal import, whatever it cost. Duty is assessed against the Harmonized Tariff Schedule classification of the goods, and it is owed by you as the recipient, usually collected by the carrier before delivery.

We will not print a percentage here, and you should be sceptical of any seller who does. The rate depends on how the piece is classified within Chapter 71 of the tariff schedule, and additional tariff programmes can sit on top of the base rate. Both the classification and those programmes have changed more than once in the last twelve months. Check cbp.gov on the day you order, not the day you read this.

3. Sales tax is a state matter, and it is charged at delivery

There is no VAT in the United States and no national sales tax. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia levy a statewide sales tax; Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon do not, though Alaska permits local sales taxes. Counties and cities frequently add their own rate on top of the state's.

What decides your rate is where the parcel is delivered, not where the seller sits. Since the Supreme Court's 2018 decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, states can require out-of-state sellers to collect tax once they cross a threshold of sales into that state, which is why a US price is quoted before tax and a European price is quoted after it. A listing that says $1,200 in America means $1,200 plus whatever your county adds.

4. American ring sizes are their own scale

The US and Canada use a numeric scale in whole, half and quarter steps. It is not the British letter scale and not the ISO circumference figure used across most of Europe and Asia. The arithmetic underneath it is simple and worth knowing, because it tells you how much a resize actually moves.

Inner circumference in millimetres equals 36.5 plus 2.55 times the US size. A size 6 is therefore about 51.8mm around and 16.5mm across; a size 7 is 54.4mm around and 17.3mm across. One full size is 2.55mm of circumference, and a quarter size — the smallest step most benches will cut — is about 0.64mm. That is the resolution of the whole system, and it is why “it feels slightly loose” is often half a size, not one.

Our conversion chart maps the US numbers against the British and ISO scales, and there is a separate piece on measuring at home without a mandrel.

5. Your rights are narrower than most people think

Three American beliefs that are not true, and one rule that is.

• There is no federal right to return something because you changed your mind. The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule gives three days to cancel, but only for sales made at your home, workplace or a temporary location — a trade show, a hotel showing. It does not cover a store purchase and it does not cover an online order.
• A return policy is not optional to read. Because there is no statutory backstop, whatever the seller publishes is the rule. On made-to-order work that policy is frequently narrower than on stock.
• “Certified” is not a legal term. A grading report from IGI, GIA or GCAL describes a stone. It is not a warranty, and it says nothing about the ring built around it.
• The rule that does bite: the FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule. A seller must ship within the time it advertised, or within 30 days if it advertised none, and must otherwise offer you the choice of waiting or taking a refund.

Two protections do a lot of quiet work in America and neither comes from jewelry law: a credit card chargeback under the Fair Credit Billing Act, and the dispute process of whichever platform took your money.

What to specify on a US order

1. Ring size on the US numeric scale, with a quarter size if you know it — never a letter, never a bare millimetre figure.
2. Who pays duty, in writing, and whether the quoted price is delivered-duty-paid or not.
3. Production time and transit time quoted as two separate numbers.
4. The metal stamp that will be applied, and whose trademark will sit next to it.
5. Whether the price shown includes your state and local sales tax or is quoted before it.
6. The resize policy in months, and who pays shipping both ways if a resize is needed.

Frequently asked questions