Stackable Gold Rings Review: Daily Wear Test

For thirty-nine years I wore exactly one ring. The plain gold band Walt put on my finger the year we married, and nothing else, ever. I am not a jewelry person in the way the magazines mean it. I am a jewelry person in the way that I want to look nice at church and at lunch with Donna on Thursdays, and I am not spending fine-jewelry money to get there. Donna has a big statement ring she wears on her right hand and every time I saw it across the table I thought, I could do that. I just never did.

The first week of August I ordered the Honsny stackable gold rings in a size 7 and put them on my right ring finger. That was three months ago. In that time they have been to church on Sunday, to lunch every Thursday, to the church office on Wednesday mornings, through a Marietta summer that turns a parked car into an oven by ten in the morning, and through a considerable number of supper dishes. I have not been rough with them. I have not been especially careful either. This is what three months actually did to a brass stacking set with cubic zirconia in it, and I am going to tell you the dull part as well as the pretty part.

How I've Used It

My jewelry goes on last in the morning, after the lotion and the hairspray and the perfume. I learned that with a necklace years back and I have not repeated the mistake. Everything comes off at bedtime. The rings come off for a shower, for a bath, for dishes, for gardening, for anything involving a cleaner, and they go into their own compartment in the lined tray in my top dresser drawer. A soft dry cloth first, then the tray. No dips, no polish, no toothpaste, no little ultrasonic machine. I have read what those do to plating and I believe it.

Most days I wear two or three of them together and leave it at that. On a Sunday I might wear just one, quiet and plain, because I am not trying to be noticed at church. If Walt and I are going out to dinner I will put on more of them and let the stones catch the light a little. That is the whole appeal of a stacking set to me. It is not one ring you are stuck with for the evening. It is a decision you get to make again every morning in about four seconds, and at sixty-one I have come to enjoy small decisions.

The tray matters more than you would think. I started out dropping them loose into a small dish on my dresser and they would slide around and turn over each other. Now each one goes into its own compartment in the lined tray in the top drawer, always in the same order. It takes four seconds. That is how a stack stays a stack instead of a drawer of loose rings.

I also want to say this plainly, because I think it saves people disappointment. I did not buy these to pass down to Kelly. I bought them to wear to the grocery store and to lunch and to look nice doing it. If you go in expecting your grandmother's ring, you will be let down, and that is not the ring's fault. That is a shopping mistake.

A friend at church asked me in September where I got them, and honestly that is the only review that matters. She thought it was one ring. I told her it was several and she turned her own hand over and looked at it the way women do when they have just decided something.

What the Set Is Actually Made Of

The listing gives the metal as brass and the stones as cubic zirconia, round, set in prongs, and the band carries a 14K stamp. I want to be plain about that because a great many listings are not. Brass is the base metal. The gold on top of it is plating. A 14K stamp on a plated brass ring is not the same promise as a 14K stamp on solid gold, and anybody who tells you different is selling you something. Honsny stamps the band and describes the set as non tarnish, and I will get to how that claim held up in a minute.

One more thing about the stones. The listing calls them round and white, prong set, eye clean, and synthetic, which is a fancy word for made in a lab rather than dug out of the ground. I have no quarrel with that. A cubic zirconia is not a diamond and Honsny does not claim it is. What it is, is a stone with some life in it that catches the kitchen window on a Sunday morning and looks like more than it costs. That is all I wanted.

What I can tell you is that the stones are set properly. Each one sits down in prongs that are actually closed over it, not glued into a hole, and three months of hand cream and dish soap has not moved a single one. I have turned them over and looked, more than once. The setting work is the part of an inexpensive ring that usually fails first, and it is where this set earns its keep.

The listing puts the whole set at 0.03 kg and on the finger they are light. I forget I have them on by mid morning, which is the highest compliment I can pay a ring. Nothing digs in between my fingers when I make a fist. Nothing spins around to the wrong side and stays there while I am talking to somebody.

Three Months of Humidity, Hand Cream and Dish Soap

Here is the honest part, and I am not going to dress it up. The inside of the band is softer than it was in August. Where the rings rub against each other there is a slight dulling, and the shine on the inner curve, the part that sits against your skin where nobody sees it, has gone a little flat. That is plating doing what plating does. Three months of a Georgia summer, hand cream twice a day, and a woman who washes her hands as often as a retired school office manager washes her hands. It was going to happen. I knew it was going to happen.

August was the real test. I did not plan it that way, and then spent the whole month being glad I had not ordered in October. I would come in from the car with my hands hot, run them under cold water, dry them on a towel, and put the rings straight back on. Fifteen times a day for a month, easily. If a finish is going to give up, it gives up in that, and mostly this one did not.

What did not happen is the list of things I actually worry about. No stone has come loose. No prong has bent. Nothing has turned my finger green, and I am a person whose ears went red and itchy from drugstore earrings for years, so I notice things like that. The finish on the outside of the band, the part people see across a lunch table, still looks the way it did in August. The wear is all on the underside, where it belongs and where I am the only one who knows.

I checked them once a week for the first month, the way you do with anything new and cheap, holding each one up to the window and looking for a stone working its way up out of the prongs. I stopped checking somewhere around week six, not because I stopped caring but because there was never anything to find. That is a quiet kind of good news and it does not make a dramatic story, which is exactly why I trust it.

I do not expect these to look new forever. I said that to Donna in September and I will say it here. A plated brass ring is a two-year ring if you are lucky and careful, not a twenty-year ring. What I got for three months is better than I expected. If the finish makes it to two years of daily wear I will call that a fair trade and buy another set without complaining about it.

No stone has come loose, no prong has bent, and nothing has turned my finger green in three months of daily wear.

The Fit on a Size 7 Finger

I ordered a 7 because that is what I wear on my right ring finger, and it came true to size. It slid over the knuckle with a small push and sits snug at the base without pinching. Snug matters with a stacking set, more than it does with a single ring. If the base ring is loose the whole stack slides around and you spend the day pushing it back up with your thumb, and after a week the fun has gone right out of it.

One small thing worth knowing. My knuckle is wider than the base of my finger, which runs in my family, so a snug ring has to be pushed on and then it sits still once it is past. If your knuckle is much wider than the base you may want to think about that before you order, because a stack you cannot get off in a hurry is a nuisance. Mine comes off with a small twist.

Stacking changes the fit a little. Two or three rings together take up more room than one, and my hands swell in July the way everybody's hands swell in July, so I wear fewer of them then and more of them in cool weather. If you are between sizes, take the size that fits you on an ordinary afternoon. Do not take the size that fits you at seven in the morning, because that is when hands are at their smallest and you will end up with a stack that rattles.

How It Compares to the Ring I Almost Bought

Donna wears a single statement ring, one large stone on one wide band, and I have admired it on her hand at lunch for two years. I did not buy one. I looked at a few at a department store counter instead, turned one over, saw what it cost, and set it back down on the velvet. I have never owned a statement ring and I am not going to pretend I did. What I can tell you is that a big single ring has to carry the entire outfit, and some days I do not have an outfit that deserves carrying.

What I chose instead is the opposite idea. Instead of one ring doing all the work, I have several small ones I can rearrange. On a plain day two of them look like I made an effort. On a better day more of them look like I made more of an effort. I get to change my mind, and after thirty-nine years of one ring, changing my mind once in a while turns out to be its own small pleasure.

I want to be clear that this set has not replaced my wedding band. Walt's band is on my left hand and it never comes off, and it is the only real gold I wear. The stackables live on the right hand and they know their place. There is no competition between them and I would not want there to be.

Who This Is For

This is for the woman who wants a nice looking right hand without a fine-jewelry budget, and who understands what she is buying when she clicks the button. If you are the type who takes her rings off for dishes and hand cream and bed, and you are not expecting to hand these to a granddaughter, the Honsny set will please you. It is also a good first stack. If you have been thinking about stacking for a year and cannot decide how many rings you like or how you like them spaced, this lets you find out for about what a nice lunch costs.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you want a ring you can wear in the pool and the shower and never think about again, because plated brass will not do that for you no matter what the listing says. Skip it if your hands swell a great deal or your size changes with the season, because a stack needs a snug base ring to behave itself. And skip it if what you actually want is one good ring. Save for the one good ring. This set is a nice thing to have and I am glad I bought it, but it is not a substitute for real gold and I would not tell you otherwise.