Sourcing silver jewellery components wholesale for the first time means picking up a lot of trade vocabulary fast. This is a working glossary of the terms you'll run into most often - bookmark it, and follow the links for a deeper dive on the ones that matter most to your first order.
Material and purity terms
- 925 / Sterling Silver - the industry-standard alloy of 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% other metal (usually copper), chosen for its balance of durability and appearance. See our purity grades guide.
- Hallmark / HUID - an independently verified purity mark, distinct from a plain manufacturer's stamp. See our hallmarking guide.
- Oxidized finish - a deliberately darkened/antiqued surface treatment that sits in recessed detailing, making textured or engraved work stand out more sharply than a plain polished finish.
- Granulation - a decorative technique where tiny silver spheres are fused onto a surface to build raised texture and pattern, central to Bali-style beadwork.
- Filigree - fine silver wire twisted and soldered into lace-like, open patterns, often combined with granulation.
Component and product terms
- Findings - the trade term for functional connector components: jump rings, clasps, ear wires, headpins, crimps. See our findings guide.
- Jump ring - a small open or soldered metal loop used to connect two components.
- Clasp - the closure mechanism on a necklace or bracelet (lobster clasp, toggle clasp, hook-and-eye, and others).
- Bead cap - a small decorative cap that sits at either end of a bead, framing it and hiding the stringing hole.
- Bali beads - hand-detailed, Balinese-style beads built around granulation and filigree work. See our Bali beads guide.
- Jhumka - a traditional bell-shaped Indian earring style.
- Tops - trade shorthand for stud earrings.
- Charm - a small decorative pendant-style piece added to personalise a necklace or bracelet.
Buying and pricing terms
- MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) - the smallest quantity a supplier will fulfil, whether per design or per order. See our MOQ guide.
- Wholesale vs retail pricing - wholesale pricing is quoted for bulk buyers (makers, retailers, exporters) reselling or assembling the components, typically without the markup a single retail piece would carry.
- Per-gram pricing - since silver is priced by weight, a component's cost is calculated as (weight in grams × the day's silver rate per gram) plus making/finishing charges. See our guide to why silver pricing isn't fixed.
- Making charges - the labour, detailing, and margin component of a price, layered on top of the raw material cost and comparatively stable day to day.
- Lead time - the time between order confirmation and dispatch, confirmed per order rather than fixed.
Putting the glossary to use
You don't need to memorise all of this before placing your first inquiry - but recognising these terms means you can ask sharper questions and read a supplier's catalogue more critically. Every term above maps to something concrete in our own catalogue: browse by category, and where a design has exact weight and size on record, you'll see it listed directly on the product page.