A single casket figure is really four decisions stacked together: shell material, hardware, interior and seal, and each one moves on its own.
The number on the card in a casket showroom looks like one price for one object, and it isn't. It's four decisions that were made for you by whoever ordered the floor models, bundled into a single figure and arranged in a row so that the differences between them read as quality rather than as line items. Shell material, hardware, interior, seal. Those are the four, and they scale at very different rates. Once you can see them apart, you can hold three of them still and move the fourth, which is where most of the money is.
The shell is the largest number and the one that moves most
Everything else is attached to the shell, so the shell sets the floor. Steel is priced by gauge, and the gauge numbers run backward: eighteen gauge is thicker and dearer than twenty gauge, and sixteen gauge dearer again. Stainless and copper and bronze sit above all of them, sometimes by multiples rather than percentages. Wood is priced by species, so poplar and pine sit low, oak and cherry in the middle, walnut and mahogany at the top. A wholesale catalog will show you the same casket in four woods, and the spread between the cheapest and the dearest is usually larger than the entire cost of the interior.
What that means in practice is simple. If you need the total to come down and you only get to change one thing, change the shell. Dropping from a sixteen gauge steel to a twenty gauge, or from mahogany to poplar with a similar stain, changes the number more than any other single substitution available to you, and it changes what the casket looks like at a distance less than you'd expect.
Hardware is a separate line even when it isn't printed separately
Handles, corners, hinges and the swing bar assembly are components, sourced and priced as components, and the showroom rarely breaks them out. A stamped handle and a heavy cast one do different things to the invoice and nothing different for the family. This is also where the decorative upgrades live: applied corner ornaments, cast emblems, engraved panels, the small pieces that get described as personalization and get priced accordingly. Ask whether the same shell is available with plainer hardware, because it very often is, and the manufacturer's own line sheet will list both variants under one model name.
The interior is fabric, and fabric is priced like fabric
Crepe, twill, velvet, and the various satins run from modest to expensive in roughly that order, and the construction matters as much as the cloth: a flat panel costs less than a shirred or tufted one, because tufting is labor. Interiors also come in half couch and full couch, and the pillow, throw and head panel are usually included but sometimes are not. This is the decision families feel most strongly about and the one that moves the total least, which is worth knowing before you trade away shell material to fund it. Spend here if it matters to you. Just spend here knowing what it costs relative to everything else.
The seal is a gasket, and it should be priced as one
Gasketed models carry a rubber seal and a locking mechanism, and they cost more than the identical non-gasketed shell. What that buys is a physical barrier against water and soil, nothing more, and the Federal Trade Commission is the agency responsible for how funeral goods are disclosed and advertised, including what sellers may and may not claim about protective features. Preservation is not among the claims a seller should be making. Plenty of families still want the gasket, for reasons that are their own, and it is a reasonable thing to buy. It's also the cleanest single item to remove if the total needs to come down, because it changes nothing you can see.
Pricing the four separately, in the room
Ask for the general price list, which you're entitled to receive, and then ask a narrower question: what does this same model cost one gauge thinner, or in the other wood, or without the gasket, or with the standard crepe instead of the velvet. A funeral director who orders from a catalog can answer all four, because the catalog is organized exactly that way. Third-party sellers make the structure even plainer, since a page listing a Coffin alongside its steel and hardwood equivalents forces the shell decision into the open rather than burying it in a display arrangement.
Then move one variable at a time and watch what happens to the number. Most families find the same thing: two of the four decisions account for the great majority of the spread, and the other two are worth what they're worth to that family, which is a real answer and not a lesser one. The point isn't to buy the cheapest of each. It's to know which lever you pulled, and what it returned.
Nobody makes this arithmetic easy on purpose, but it isn't hidden either. It's sitting inside a single figure that four separate suppliers contributed to, and it comes apart cleanly the moment you ask for it in pieces.