Part 1 of this series of articles, Three Big Reasons For Buying Vintage Jewellery, is here.
Because vintage jewellery is plentiful doesn’t mean you should dive in and start buying without giving it a little thought.
And there are a lot of things to consider before you start buying and the first is to decide on a theme so as not to be overwhelmed and to give your shopping some sense of purpose. You also need to know how to be careful in what you buy and lastly, you will need to find out where to go.
A theme
Most people (me included) buy in a haphazard fashion. That is, they look around and buy something that catches their eye, just like that! This is great and it suits the way we live today but it does have a downside. Shopping this way means you end up with a lot of items of different sorts and styles, colours and sizes and then spend hours putting things aside because they just don’t seem to go one with each other.
To remedy this you might like to choose one, or perhaps several, themes. Then you can collect particular stones or certain colours, for example, you might choose amethyst or maybe the colours purple and green. if you do this then the items you purchase will then go together better and look more coordinated when you wear them. As an alternative, you might collect predominately one type of metal, say silver.
But coordination is not the only advantage of this approach. It also makes the number and scale of items from which to choose a little more manageable. Otherwise, it is easy to feel overwhelmed, particularly when you look on Ebay.
Give a little thought to this before you start and maybe select one of two ideas for themes and see how you go. Of course, I’m not suggesting you stick rigidly to them but this way it will give you some purpose and direction in your shopping.
Be careful!
Like any purchase, you need to be aware of just a couple of things. Make sure that you are buying from a reputable source and make sure that you know exactly what it is you are buying and are not fooled by adverts that can be misleading. Lastly, make sure you have some form of guarantee or that you can return the goods if you are buying on the internet.
On Amazon, the procedure for this is well documented and, so far as I am aware, and from personal experience, it works very well and my experience of buying from Ebay UK has been a very positive one. Buying from second hand shops, charity and thrift shops, too, is usually trouble free but be a little more careful here and make sure you trust the seller before you part with money.
Buying from second shops can be fun for you are often buying from someone who is not an expert and so may not know the true value of what they are selling. This can, of course, work to your advantage but it can also result in paying too much. The moral here is know and understand what you are buying and it’s value.
You also need to check the condition and make sure that the items are free from missing stones and fasteners, unless you are buying with a view to minor repair (a very nice and fascinating way to buy jewellery).
Where to buy
Amazon sell vintage jewellery and a big advert is shown at the bottom of this article so remember to have a look before you leave.
You will want to know your ring size and a useful ring size chart is available free from this page on Amazon UK. It is a PDF document that will open in Adobe Acrobat which most Windows users will already have installed.
Ebay, too, is a good place to look and a link to ‘vintage jewellery’ is here for Ebay UK. On the day that I did this article I found an excellent selection of clips and brooches, including some multiple items.
A search is here for jewellery on Bing and is tailored just for the UK.
A similar search but worldwide for vintage jewellery images on Bing’s excellent long page is here.
Yahoo, too, is worth a look and a search for vintage jewellery for the UK is here, while an image search for the UK is here.
The shops on Etsy are a good place and always worth a look and, of course, they deliver to the UK and a link to vintage jewerly (note the spelling) reveals many pages to sort through and the link is here.
Finally, I did a search for vintage jewellery in Flickr and if you want to look to get some ideas of what’s available, then the link is here and, again, it is well worth a look.
Photo: Social Butterfly Jewellery
