Titanium jewelry has taken off in recent years, mostly from its good looks and low price. So what’s the metal that has more to do with golf clubs, body parts and space rockets doing in a 
jewelry case.
Titanium’s desirability as a metal for jewelry has been questioned before and many jewelers feel as though its an industrial metal and can never be considered as real jewelry because it really has no intrinsic value.
Its hard to imagine that black titanium rings as good looking as the one to the right above which is a comfort fit black titanium band would have no intrinsic value. Also check out the black and grey titanium ring below left with a tribal design on it. It is sharp looking and sells for over a $100.
So the scrap value of a black titanium ring in the jewelry trade is non existent. Gold silver and 
platinum are routinely sent to a refiner by jewelers to recover valuable metal from the metal dust, filings and scrap pieces that litter their jewelers’ benches.
However with titanium there is no scrap value because there is no reclaim or product that would be worth remelting or soldering because titanium is treated as a commodity in the metal markets.
So if a customer outgrow their diamond titanium ring by over 3/4 of a size they would be out of luck because they would have to scrap that ring and pull it apart so they could get the diamond and perhaps other precious metal inlays out and junk that titanium ring that perhaps was a titanium engagement ring with sentimental value and engraved dates.
The metal is available to titanium jewelery manufacturers only in huge rods and blocks so the little pieces generated from a bench jeweler are of no consequence. Recycling titanium is only worth it in huge quantities because if a jeweler or manufacturer ever manages to generate a thousand pounds of scrap, it would only be worth on the order of 30 cents or so a pound.
This is hardly worth the storage space required to keep the titanium as it accumulates to a commercially viable amount to be recycled. As you can imagine, a jeweler would be hard pressed to generate even one pound a week as scrap titanium given the size of titanium jewelry products. A mens titanium ring is barely going to be heavier than 6 grams so it would take a lot of titanium product to be scrapped to accumulate anything worthwhile.
Many jewelers pride themselves on giving great repair and after sale service and for some of them the possibility of liability issues in the event that a ring they sold needs to be cut from a customer for an emergency medical reason.
Some jewelers need to keep bolt cutters handy in case they have a customers who needs to have their titanium ring come off in a jiffy. Other jewelers have their customers sign liability release forms when they purchase titanium rings.
However the most annoying thing about titanium is the sizing issue especially for titanium wedding rings. Mens titanium rings can be trying because usually sizing up from the standard mens size of 9 does not really help since in America the average man’s fingers are larger than the rest of the world’s.
In general, pure titanium rings and mixed metal rings (titanium ring with gold inlay) like the 
ring to the right can be sized perhaps a quarter to a half size up but cannot be sized down.
If the customer requires a smaller size then a new ring in that size must be ordered. Most jewelers will stock a range of sizes so as not to lose their customer.
For instance in mens titanium wedding bands the popular sizes are eight and a half to ten and a half so a jeweler would want to stock this range of sizes in half size increments. Pure titanium rings cost the jeweler less than $80 each so this would not be a problem.
However a titanium wedding ring with diamonds or titanium engagement rings with other precious metals like gold or platinum would cost too much to stock such a range of sizes More than likely the jeweler will have one display piece in the mens standard size 9 and another in a size 10. Anything beyond that would be special ordered.
