Museums read English skull rings of the late 1500s and early 1600s as reminders of death: memento mori, "remember that you must die". For the skull ring meaning in a buyer's own words, a 2023 review of our best-selling skull ring says: "a quick glance at it reminds you of your own mortality".
Skulls are also a big part of what we sell: in the two years to October 2026, 1,372 of our 4,980 orders, more than one in four, included a piece with a skull in its name. We have 134 skull rings in the shop, plus 62 skull pendants, 24 necklaces, 21 bracelets, 18 earring designs and 6 cuffs. In our experience bikers buy them most, then rockers. Women buy them too, and they go for the small rings.
We've sold this jewelry since 2004, and our skull pieces come from makers in Thailand. The sterling silver skull rings and pendants are .925, stamped 925 inside the band or on the back, and some add brass or gold-plated details. The weights below are ones we took on a jewelry scale. This page covers what the skull has meant, the styles we stock, weights, sizes, the eyes, the black finish, spinners and hinged jaws, and our pendants.
Skull Ring Meaning: Memento Mori, Mourning Rings and Calaveras
A skull ring can carry several meanings: a reminder of death, the remembrance of someone who died, the calavera of the Day of the Dead or, among bikers, risk-taking and rebellion. Memento mori jewelry takes its name from a Latin phrase that translates as "remember that you must die" (Merriam-Webster).
The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a gold and enamel skull ring made in England between 1550 and 1600, and its catalog says the ring "reminds the wearer that she or he must die"; it may also have been a betrothal or wedding ring. The London Museum has an early 17th-century death's head ring with a white-enamel skull and crossbones.
In 17th-century England, people left money in their wills to buy mourning rings for named friends and family: a 1677 will from Cornwall leaves a cousin two pounds "to buy a mourning Ring". In the later 18th and early 19th centuries, mourning jewelry moved toward monuments, urns, mourning figures and plaited hair, a "shift from the earlier symbols of mortality to those of remembrance", in the London Museum's words.
You may read that a slave whispered "memento mori" to a Roman general in his triumph. One ancient account, by Tertullian, has the man in the triumph reminded from behind to look back and remember he is a man; it names no slave and doesn't use those words.
Our sugar skull jewelry comes from another tradition. Calavera is Spanish for skull. Sugar skulls go on home altars for the Day of the Dead on 1 and 2 November (Library of Congress), and in 2008 UNESCO inscribed Mexico's "Indigenous festivity dedicated to the dead" on its heritage list. Our green-eyed sugar skull ring has brass teeth and eye bezels around green CZ eyes, and the two-tone calavera ring hides a small silver skull inside each eye socket.
The Torrance Art Museum's 2020 exhibition Death Cult followed the skull from early bikers, often soldiers back from World War Two, to today's skateboarders, as a "signifier for risk taking youthfulness and rebellion".
Which Way Should a Skull Ring Face?
Customers ask us which way a skull ring should face, and our answer is that it's your call. We haven't found a museum, historian or etiquette guide that sets a rule for skull rings. The inward and outward "meanings" you'll see online mostly appear in jewelry shop guides, and we couldn't trace them to any established custom.
The Skull Ring Styles We Stock
Our 134 skull rings come in many designs. Here are seven of the styles we stock, one example of each, with its weight:
| Style | What to look for | One of ours | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single skull | A human skull alone on the band, polished on top, darkened in the eyes and teeth | Our best seller | 19 g |
| Skull and crossbones | Crossed bones under the skull, sometimes framed by a card suit | Ace of spades skull ring | 30 g |
| Skeleton | Bones or a whole skeleton carved around the band, or a skeleton hand | Skeleton skull ring | 39 g |
| Sugar skull (calavera) | Flowers, crosses and patterns on the skull, often with brass and colored eyes | Green-eyed sugar skull ring | 32 g |
| Memento mori | Life and death in one design, like a face that's half skin, half skull | Memento mori two face ring | 18 g |
| Spinner | One band turns freely around another, with skulls carved around it | Skull spinner ring | 19 g |
| Animal skull | A raven's skull with its beak, set with stone eyes | Raven skull ring | 30 g |
How Heavy Is a Skull Ring?
Weights run from 6 to 42 grams across our 134 skull rings, and the median is 25 grams. The lightest is the skull and rose ring, about 6 grams, a signet-style ring with brass-accent plating on its medallion face and an adjustable open band. The heaviest is the sun god skull ring at 42 grams, with a 25 × 41 mm face. Weighted by what people bought, the skull rings we sold in the last two years averaged 23 grams.
Weight is only a rough guide to how big a ring looks: at 30 grams, our faces run from 25 × 30 mm on the ace of spades skull ring to 25 × 51 mm on the raven skull ring. Our best seller weighs 19 grams with a 19 × 25 mm face, and the skull is open underneath; our guide to wearing men's rings shows the back. The skeleton skull ring weighs 39 grams, with a 32 × 35 mm face and skeleton arms carved all the way around the band.
Two reviews of that ring are worth reading before you buy. One 5-star review says the only complaint was that the sharp edges of the teeth "dig in to your finger". Another, from 2020, says the buyer's husband "had bent the ring" within a couple of hours. GIA notes that sterling silver is softer than gold and platinum, "making it more prone to scratches and dents".
Skull Ring Sizes, Including Small Hands
Across the 858 skull rings we sold with a size in the last two years, the middle size was US 11. About one in five was size 14 or larger, up to 18.5, and about one in ten was 7.5 or smaller. Most of our skull rings are offered from about size 6 to 16 or 17; the smallest size on any of them is 5, and the largest is 19.
Skull rings for women come down to size and face. A 2020 reviewer of our two-tone calavera ring wanted "something for myself that wasn't going to look too 'manish'". For a light ring, the skull and rose ring weighs about 6 grams with a 12 × 24 mm face, and its open band adjusts from US 6 to 10.5.
Wide bands fit tighter. GIA notes that "rings with wide shanks usually need to be a bit larger, as they will fit more snugly". On a ring with a band wider than 6 mm we suggest one size up; our ring size guide shows how to measure.
If the size still isn't right, email us and send the ring back unworn within 45 days of delivery, and we'll exchange it for another size we have in stock. You pay the postage back; we ship the new size free.
Need a size that isn't on the menu? Some designs can be made in other sizes, so message us about the one you want before you order.
What Are the Eyes in a Skull Ring?
The eyes in many of our skull rings are cubic zirconia (CZ), a lab-made crystal, faceted and set in a metal rim called a bezel: green on the sugar skull rings, red, blue or clear on others. Each product page names the stone. GIA lists CZ among diamond simulants, and the FTC jewelry guides call it deceptive to give an imitation a gem's name unless a word like "imitation" or "simulated" comes right before it. A red CZ is a red CZ, not a ruby.
Some pieces use genuine stones, and their pages say so: two faceted garnets in the garnet skull pendant, blue topaz in the eyes of the raven skull ring, and black onyx beads on the black onyx skull bracelet. The raven ring's blue topaz is heat-treated. Others have no stones at all; our best seller's eye sockets are carved deep and darkened.
An eye stone coming loose is rare for us, maybe once a year, and we replace it. As of October 2026, one of the 1,251 reviews of our skull jewelry mentions a stone falling out.
The Black Finish, and How to Care for It
Most of our skull pieces are oxidized: the eye sockets, teeth and cracks are black, and the high points are polished bright. A traditional way to darken silver is liver of sulfur, which blackens the surface; the high points are then polished bright again. With long wear the black can fade slowly where the piece rubs, while the recesses keep it longer; a jeweler's guide on Ganoksin notes that a patina wears off over time, mostly on the high areas that get brushed or rubbed.
Every jewelry order ships with a silver polishing cloth and a drawstring pouch, and wiping often with the cloth keeps the silver bright. Silver polishing cloths carry a mild abrasive (Canadian Conservation Institute), so we'd use light pressure on the raised silver and keep the cloth off gold-plated details. Our care advice is the cloth only: keep the piece out of the shower, the pool and the sea. Our silver care guide goes further into tarnish.
Skull Spinner Rings and Hinged Jaws
Six of our skull rings are spinners: one band turns freely around another, and they weigh 12 to 24 grams. We sold 73 of them in the two years to October 2026. Of the 65 reviews on those six rings, 64 give four or five stars; the one three-star review says the size runs small. One buyer's husband spins his "to calm him down when he gets overwhelmed at work".
We've had a problem with a spinner very rarely, and we're glad to take one back and exchange it.
A few skulls have a lower jaw on a working hinge: the spade skull ring with moveable jaw (30 grams, sizes 9.5 to 12), the garnet skull pendant, the tiger skull pendant and our 95-gram heavy silver skull necklace. In our experience, none of our hinged jaws has come back with a problem.
Skull Pendants, Bracelets and Earrings
Our skull pendants come without a chain or cord (the few skull necklaces sold with a chain say so on the page), so check the bail, the loop at the top, on each page. The garnet skull pendant's bail takes chains up to about 4 mm thick, and the longhorn skull pendant has a 6 mm bail for chains up to about 5 mm. One buyer of a skull bullet pendant found "the chain eyelet is extremely small, so I'm still looking for a suitable chain". Most of our skull pendants weigh 10 to 40 grams, and our chain guide covers lengths and widths.
Our skull bracelets are sterling silver; a few set the skulls on steel cable or black leather. The skull earrings we sell most are the skull and crossbones studs, 11 × 11 mm, sold as a pair with butterfly backs.
If you want one classic skull, our best seller weighs 19 grams with a 19 × 25 mm face. For small hands, the skull and rose ring weighs about 6 grams and adjusts from US 6 to 10.5. On a band wider than 6 mm, order one size up, and check each page for CZ or a genuine stone.
Browse every design in skull bracelets and skull earrings, or see the whole range in skull jewelry.