My wife and I are buying me a backup wedding ring. The ring I have now is 24 karat gold and is great. It’s too soft, though, so we want to keep it for special occasions.
What karat should I get? I want a ring that looks nice, but is hard enough to not bend and ding too much. Should I get 14 karat or 18? Is there another option?
What kind of rings do you all have? What do you recommend?
Oh, we’re talking yellow(gold) colored gold, not white.
Thanks!
Too bad you’re limiting yourself to yellow gold or I’d suggest a titanium wedding band like I have. I’m pretty rough on jewelry so I went for durability. It is not scratchproof so it’s building up a lot of character. There is a nitride finish which is gold color but I doubt if that’s what you want. As for 14 vs 18 karat I think you’re splitting hairs. If durability is the goal the lower karat is probably going to be more durable.
I have a 14 karat band (white gold) and it looks fine to me after 7 years. Maybe just a tad of light scuffing, but I haven’t had it professionally cleaned up or anything. I’d go with the 14 karat - you already have a band for special occasions, so you might as well go with durability. I can’t see any difference just looking at 14 vs. 18 karat gold, either.
Well, I’m not married yet but I did buy my ring. It’s 10 karat. Sitting in a box for 3 years has done no damage 
However, I have another ring which is 10 karat. It has survived 1 year of working in a bandsaw factory, 3 years of gardening, 4 years of shoveling lots of snow, and 3 moves. I’d suggest getting 10 karat.
For a wedding band, I would go with 18k.
14k gold (quite common in the States) has a brassier yellow color, while 18k and above has a deeper yellow that stands out and looks more attractive. Anything more than 18k is too soft for normal day-to-day activity.
Our original bands were 14k and they served quite well for years (getting banged up a bit but no big deal). On our 10th anniversary we were in Brazil, a place where they don’t even sell 14k gold, and we bought a pair of 18k bands to commemorate the occasion. Haven’t worn the old one since.
My wedding band is 14K Yellow gold. It has held up pretty well.
My class ring is 10K white gold.
I used to be a NCSU season ticket holder, and my wedding band is definitely softer than my my class ring. I am now to put my class ring into my pocket at State Games.
This is my back-up ring. I’ve been very happy with it.
http://secure.jamesavery.com/view_jewelry/search/viewProduct.jsp?itemCode=WB-61-A
My original was a fairly thin band and was taking some abuse so we put it in storage.
lots of nice stuff on the james avery site - http://www.jamesavery.com/