How much should a first piece of fine jewelry cost?

Set the budget by what the piece has to survive rather than by a round number. A first everyday piece — a chain, a pair of studs, a small pendant — needs solid metal rather than plate, a secure setting, and enough weight to hold its shape, and those three requirements set a floor well above costume pricing and well below statement pricing. Work the other direction too: divide the price by a realistic number of wears. A piece worn twice a week for five years takes about five hundred wears, so a $900 pair of studs is under two dollars a wear and a $250 plated pair that fails in a year is not obviously cheaper. Our cost-per-wear calculator does that arithmetic, and every brand page states the price range the brand itself publishes.