How to read a casket lineup from the cheapest end up: steel gauge, wood species, hardware, interior fabric and the gasket that quietly moves the price.
Selection rooms are arranged to be walked in one direction, from the door toward the far wall, and the prices climb as you go. A careful reader walks it the other way, starting at the cheapest unit on the floor and asking what each step up actually adds in material. Most of the difference is measurable: thickness of metal, species of wood, whether the lid is one piece or two, what the handles are bolted through, what the fabric is. Federal rules require the funeral home to hand you a printed casket price list, so you can do this reading sitting down.
Steel, counted backward
Gauge is a thickness measure that runs backward: the bigger the number, the thinner the sheet. A 20-gauge casket is the thinnest commonly sold, 18-gauge is a meaningful step up, and 16-gauge is the heaviest steel most selection rooms carry. The metal is the same steel in all three; you are buying more of it, which is why the shipping weight on the spec card climbs alongside the price. Ask to see the gauge printed somewhere, on the card, the interior label, or the manufacturer's sheet, rather than taking a description like heavy-duty at face value.
Two other metal distinctions get folded into the same part of the room. Stainless steel is a different alloy, not a different gauge, and it resists rust without paint. Copper and bronze are priced by weight per square foot rather than gauge at all, usually thirty-two or forty-eight ounces, and they sit at the top of the metal range. If a casket is described only by finish, brushed pewter, silver, blue, that is paint and polish, and it tells you nothing about the sheet underneath it.
Wood by species, and by which part is solid
The wood side of the room usually starts with poplar and pine, both softer, lighter and plainer in grain, often finished dark enough that the species is hard to see. Above them sit oak, ash and maple, then cherry, mahogany and walnut at the top, priced roughly in the order that lumber yards price the same boards. What a careful reader checks is the word solid, and where it is applied. A casket can be solid hardwood throughout, or it can be veneer over an engineered core with solid trim, and both may be shelved under the same species name.
Ask specifically whether the lid, ends and rails are the named species or whether the species is a surface layer. Neither answer is wrong. A veneered poplar unit is an honest product at an honest price, and it looks the same at the graveside as anything else. The point is to know which one the number on the card is counting, because the gap between a veneer and a solid walnut of similar appearance can be several thousand dollars, and nothing about the room will announce it.
Lids, handles and what the interior is made of
A full-couch lid opens as one piece; a half-couch lid is hinged in two, so only the top half is raised for viewing. That is a preference, not a quality grade, though half-couch tends to be the default and the cheaper units sometimes offer no choice. Handles matter more than people expect. Swing bar handles pivot on brackets and are the standard; stationary bar handles do not move; and the thing to check is whether the brackets are bolted through the shell or fixed to a wooden rail carrying real load. Pallbearers notice the difference.
Interiors run from crepe, a light woven fabric with a matte finish, through twill and satin, up to velvet. Crepe is standard at the low end, velvet at the high end, and the fabric change alone can move a price by a few hundred dollars. Look at the mattress underneath as well, and at whether the interior is gathered and shirred by hand or plainly fitted, because that labor is a real part of the number.
The gasket line
A sealing gasket is a rubber strip in the lid channel, closed with a crank key, and it is usually the single clearest price break in the metal lineup. Two otherwise identical 18-gauge caskets, one gasketed and one not, will often sit a few hundred dollars apart. The Federal Trade Commission enforces the rule that no seller may claim a casket preserves a body indefinitely, and the gasket is not a preservation device. Some families want one anyway, and some cemeteries and outer burial containers make the question moot.
Take the price list outside, line the models up by number, and see which differences you were actually being shown.