Cuban Link Weight Chart (Grams by Width and Length)

Millimeters tell you how wide the chain looks. Grams tell you how much gold you are buying. Those numbers come apart the moment a chain is hollow, flat, or a different karat.

Picture two 5 mm Cubans. One is pressed flat. One is a solid round link. They can both measure 5 mm across the face. The solid one contains more gold, so it weighs more, and it should cost more if both are priced fairly. On our wall that pair is real. The Flat Miami Cuban Chain 5mm is $1,880. The Miami Cuban Chain 5mm is described as solid gold and costs $4,260. More than double the money at the same posted width. If you shopped by millimeters only, you would call that a rip-off or a bargain depending on which tab you opened. It is neither. It is two different amounts of metal.

Length does the same thing. A 24 inch chain has more links than a 16 inch chain of the same width and build, so it weighs more. Any chart that gives one gram number for "an 8 mm Cuban" without a length is not a chart. It is a guess.

Other retailers publish gram tables for solid 14K Cubans: a weight at 16 inches, another at 20, another at 24, sorted by millimeter. Those tables belong to the chains those shops weighed. They are not a measurement of the eight Cubans in this catalog, and we are not going to paste them here and let you think you know what our 5 mm weighs.

Our listings also do something those gram-priced shops often do not. The price does not change when you pick a longer length. The hollow 8.5 mm is $4,870 at 16 inches and $4,870 at 26 inches. That is the price on the product. It does not mean the 26 inch chain weighs the same as the 16 inch chain. It means this catalog is not priced off a scale ticket. If you are comparing us with a shop that charges by the gram, you have to weigh the exact chain, at the exact length, or the comparison is junk.

Until a chain is on a scale, the honest chart is the one below: width, build, lengths we actually sell, and the price on the page. The width guide explains the look. This page explains the metal.

Chain	Width	Build in the listing	Lengths	Price	Price per mm
Miami Cuban Link Chain 1.50mm	1.5 mm	Described as solid gold	18 and 20 in	$495	$330
Flat Miami Cuban Chain 3.7mm	3.7 mm	Flat, hollow not stated	16 to 24 in	$1,355	$366
Flat Miami Cuban Chain 5mm	5 mm	Flat, hollow not stated	16 to 24 in	$1,880	$376
Flat Miami Cuban Chain 5.8mm	5.8 mm	Flat, hollow not stated	16 to 24 in	$2,060	$355
Hollow Cuban Chain 6mm	6 mm	Hollow	16 to 24 in	$2,090	$348
Hollow Cuban Chain 7.5mm	7.5 mm	Hollow	16 to 26 in	$2,870	$383
Miami Cuban Chain 5mm	5 mm	Described as solid gold	16 to 26 in	$4,260	$852
Hollow Cuban Chain 8.5mm	8.5 mm	Hollow	16 to 26 in	$4,870	$573

Price per millimeter is price divided by width. It is not price per gram. It is a flashlight. The flat chains and the hollow chains cluster between about $348 and $383 per millimeter. The solid 5 mm jumps to $852 per millimeter. The hollow 8.5 mm falls back to $573 per millimeter even though it is the widest chain we sell. Width is not what you are paying for. Build is.

All eight are 10K gold. Colors are yellow and white, except the solid 5 mm, which also comes in rose. None of this table is a 14K weight. If someone hands you a 14K gram chart and a 10K price, they are mixing two alloys.

Hold the budget still and the width moves.

• Around $2,000: flat 5 mm at $1,880, flat 5.8 mm at $2,060, hollow 6 mm at $2,090. Three chains, one narrow band of money, three builds.
• Around $4,300 to $4,900: solid 5 mm at $4,260 versus hollow 8.5 mm at $4,870. You can buy a dense narrower chain or a wide shell. You cannot buy both things in one link.

A hollow chain weighs less than a solid chain of the same outside width and length, because the middle is empty. That is the entire point of hollow construction. It is also why a hollow chain dents. There is no gold behind the wall to push back. We say that in plain language in the solid vs hollow comparison. If a seller calls a chain solid and the price looks like our hollow column, ask for grams before you pay.

Gold is denser than the copper, silver, and zinc mixed into a jewelry alloy. A higher karat means more gold and less of those lighter metals, so a 14K chain with the same outside dimensions weighs more than a 10K chain. An 18K chain of those same dimensions weighs more again. The percentages are fixed: 10K is 41.7 percent gold, 14K is 58.3 percent, 18K is 75 percent. Blue Nile's karat guide walks through the same split.

That does not mean we can multiply our 10K price by 14/10 and call it a 14K price. Labor, the hollow or solid choice, and the day's gold market all sit in the number. We do not list a 14K or 18K Cuban at all. Every one of the 46 chains in the catalog is 10K. A higher karat is a custom Cuban, quoted exactly, before anything is made.

People sometimes think 10K "weighs less" in a way that makes it fake. It is not fake. It is less pure, which is legal to sell as gold in the United States as long as it is stamped 10K. Under 10K, the FTC Jewelry Guides say it should not be sold as gold. The stamp you want on these chains is 10K or 417.

1. Use a jeweler's gram scale, not a kitchen scale. A kitchen scale is built for flour. A 1.5 mm chain may not even register honestly on it.
2. Weigh the chain you are buying, clasp included, nothing else on the tray. A pendant left on the chain is not the chain's weight.
3. Write down length at the same time. Grams without inches cannot be compared to the next quote.
4. Write down solid or hollow in the same note. A light weight on a wide chain is normal when the title says Hollow. It is a problem when the seller said solid.
5. Ask for the karat stamp in the same photo as the scale if you are buying from someone you cannot visit. Stamp, grams, length, width. Four facts.

If you are in Miami, the cleaner version is to put two chains in your hand. The solid 5 mm against the flat 5 mm teaches the weight lesson faster than any table. The showroom is at 7900 NW 27th Ave, Unit 506. Call 954-504-5640 and say which two widths you want on the counter.

A fair quote has five fields: karat, solid or hollow, width in millimeters, length in inches, and either grams or a price you can tie to those four. Missing any one of them, you are guessing.

Then do the only division that helps. Price divided by grams is the dollar per gram, labor included. You cannot do that division on our listings today, because grams are not on the page. You can do price divided by width, which is the table above, and you can refuse any quote that will not tell you the build.

Gold moves. A price per gram that looked normal last year can look cheap or expensive after the spot price moves. Kitco publishes the live gold price if you want the backdrop. The chain price still includes labor, so a fair retail price per gram sits above the melt value of the gold inside it. Anyone selling "below melt" on a finished Cuban is either wrong about the grams or wrong about the karat.

For the dollar side of the same question, use how much a Cuban link costs. For the look, use the width guide. The chains themselves are in Cuban link chains.

Orders ship insured. A manufacturing defect has a 7-day window to be reported. Sales are final.