This sumptuous calibre cut green tourmaline and yellow gold Edwardian bar pin was made in the United States circa 1915. Antique brooches and pins represent one of the best values in vintage jewelry today, giving far more bang-for-your-buck than similar quality rings, pendants or bracelets.
I recently visited a local antique store in search of a piece of nice vintage furniture to spruce up my house. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that everyone in my part of fly-over country apparently took the advice I had laid out in an article I wrote in late 2019 titled "Is 2020 Finally the Year to Buy Antique Furniture?"
In retrospect, the answer was clearly yes. 2020 was the year to buy antique furniture.
Who knew?
By the time I got around to browsing the aisles of this particular antique shop, any decent piece of old furniture was long gone.
But there was something else I saw there that caught my eye. In a display case filled with vintage costume jewelry and mediocre low karat gold Victorian pieces there was a hidden gem. Nestled in the corner amongst the dreck was a gorgeous yellow gold Edwardian bar pin set with a row of bright green stones. The very first thing I noticed upon handling the piece was how heavy it was given its small size. Even though it only measured 40 mm (1.6 inches) in length, the antique pin weighed in at a hefty 4.16 grams. When a piece of vintage jewelry has great heft for its size it is almost always a sure sign of quality.
Upon closer inspection I determined that the brooch was solid 14 karat gold set with 10 immaculate, square-cut green tourmalines. The tourmalines totaled a substantial 1.9 carats and were all calibre cut - a style where square or rectangular stones are precisely faceted to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with no gaps in-between. Calibre cutting first became popular in French jewelry around the year 1900 before rapidly spreading across the globe. But calibre cutting was very labor and material intensive; yields on calibre cut gems from the original rough were invariably low. As a result, calibre cut stones are usually only found in better pieces of antique jewelry (and are almost never found in modern jewelry).
The overall effect was stunning.
The rich yellow-gold hue of the millegrain setting beautifully highlighted the luscious deep-green calibre cut tourmalines. And the goldwork itself was flawless - solidly hand-worked without a trace of porosity or messy solder. You would be amazed at how many pieces of supposedly fine jewelry have nasty, sloppy goldwork - things like bulky prongs or rough finishes in hidden areas.
We can use this tidbit of knowledge to our advantage, though. You can learn the true quality level of a piece of jewelry by turning it over and looking at its back under magnification. Any deficiency in a piece's goldwork will be instantly visible.
But this gold and tourmaline Edwardian pin was a true jewel all around - even when viewed from behind.
By my estimate, the brooch was made in America around 1915. Its simple, but boldly linear design foreshadowed the rise of the Art Deco movement in the early 1920s. The brooch would have been a fairly high end piece for its time, with a retail price of at least $10 when new - equivalent to a hefty U.S. gold eagle coin containing about half a troy ounce of pure gold (the U.S. was still on a gold standard in the 1910s).
This is ideally what antique jewelry is all about. Here was a chunk of finely wrought precious metal dripping with luxurious gemstones - a feast for the eyes.
The tag on the piece asked $325. This was a good start. If the asking price is too high, negotiating a reasonable final price becomes all but impossible. I asked the woman behind the counter if the price was negotiable (pro-tip: the prices in antique stores are almost always negotiable). Because the store was a co-op (several dealers sharing a single physical location), the clerk had to call the item's dealer to inquire. The final price proffered by the dealer was $275 - a $50 discount.
I wavered. I had been hoping the dealer would come down to $250. I said I would think about it and walked out of the store.
After several weeks of deep thought, I stopped back at the antique shop and asked if the discounted $275 price still stood. A short phone call to the dealer confirmed that it did and I walked out of the store the happy owner of an exquisite piece of fine antique jewelry. In the end I decided that a $25 difference in price - the cost for two people to eat at a fast food restaurant these days - was ultimately immaterial.
But my story raises an interesting question. Why are antique brooches so cheap?
In a vintage jewelry market where it has become progressively more difficult to find any high quality pieces for less than $700 or $800, why could I walk out of an antique shop with a superlative Edwardian pin for under $300 - less than the cost of a monthly car payment?
This Cartier Art Deco diamond, pearl and rock crystal brooch is a stunning example of the "white look" that was popular in the 1920s.
Photo Credit: Tim Evanson (Creative Commons 2.0 License)
Brooches and pins have had a tough time of it lately. The market for antique brooches has been soft for more than two decades. As a result, prices for these wonderful pieces of history have been depressed.
As simple as it may seem, the primary reason vintage and antique brooches are so inexpensive is that they are currently out of fashion.
A brooch is a piece of jewelry meant to be worn on a blouse, jacket or dress. But since the early 1990s we have trended towards less and less formal women's clothing. Brooches look best on lapels, collars, straps and other relatively formal fashion trim. The formless, undulating sweaters and T-shirts of the modern age simply don't accommodate pins or brooches well!
This means that a glut of vintage and antique brooches has flooded the market while demand has remained subdued. Consequently, prices for old pins are often much, much lower than equivalent pieces of antique jewelry in other forms - like rings or pendants.
Of course, I don't expect this state of affairs to persist forever. Clothing styles make long round-trips from more formal to less formal attire and then back again. Granted, these fashion trends can take decades to fully unfold, so this isn't a situation I expect to positively resolve within the next few months!
Another thing that antique brooches have going for them is that there are a limited number of general jewelry types in existence. For example, we have rings, earrings, necklaces and pendants, bracelets and anklets and, finally, brooches and pins. Every other type of jewelry gets tossed in a minor catch-all category (i.e. tiaras, hat pins, nose studs, etc.)
In the final analysis there are just 5 broad classes of jewelry. This fact alone practically guarantees that brooches and pins will come back into style at some point in the future.
Indeed, the brooch has been with us continuously since ancient times. The Celts, Greeks and Romans used cloak pins called fibula that were made out of bronze from a very early period - before 1000 BC. These fibulae were the very first brooches.
Although purely utilitarian to start, the fibula soon evolved into a full-fledged jewelry piece that was indispensable to any high-class ancient woman. Instead of bronze, more expensive examples were wrought from silver or gold. By late antiquity, enamel and gemstones were often liberally applied to fibulae as well, completing their journey from utilitarian fashion accessory to pure luxury good.
During the early medieval period the safety pin like form of the ancient fibula gradually changed into the annular brooch - a bejeweled circle with a pin behind it so it could be fastened onto a cloak or shirt. Once the annular brooch developed, every other shape of brooch imaginably wasn't far behind - squares, cruciforms, discs and, of course, the familiar bar pin.
So the brooch has been with us for a long, long time. It isn't going anywhere, regardless of how hopelessly unfashionable it might seem today.
But the real reason I like antique brooches as an investment is because they are incredibly undervalued. Dollar for dollar they are one of the least expensive forms of vintage jewelry (along with other fashion refugees like cufflinks). So a hypothetical $1,000 spent on antique brooches will go further than if the same amount was spent on vintage earrings or bracelets, for example.
Edwardian & Art Deco Antique Brooches & Pins for Sale on eBay
Perhaps my favorite way to exploit this mispricing is to look for antique brooches that contain natural (non-synthetic) colored gemstones. It has become clear that the modern world is facing a looming colored gemstone shortage. Yet imminent disaster has been avoided over the past couple of decades by an improbable series of events.
First, there have been a handful of major colored gem field discoveries since the 1990s. The resulting mine output hasn't been massive on an absolute scale, but it has been sufficient to keep the global markets supplied at the margins.
Second, the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 and the austerity policies adopted by most developed countries in its aftermath suppressed demand for jewelry and, by extension, colored gemstones during the 2010s. However, these anti-middle class austerity policies are being abandoned due to a combination of COVID response (with its direct cash payments to citizens) and popular political support for higher wages for the average worker.
But before we can fully explore the economics of investing in antique brooches, I think it is important that we understand colored gems a bit better.
The colored gemstone market is both highly fragmented and relatively small. It is estimated that more than $170 billion worth of gold is mined every year, compared to just $16 billion for rough diamonds and a piddling $3 billion for all rough colored gemstones combined (excluding jade).
Almost all colored gem mining is artisanal in scale. Artisanal mining refers to small groups of individual miners that primarily use hand tools (or hand-held power tools) to extract gems. Colored gemstone miners rarely enjoy the benefits of the massive mechanization seen in the diamond industry. And it would hardly matter if they had access to all that expensive equipment anyway - most colored stone deposits are too small for large scale mining to make economic sense.
Due to God's wonderfully dry sense of humor, almost all major colored gem deposits are located in geographically remote and politically unstable regions. The biomes surrounding these mines are typically scorched deserts, burning savannas or primeval jungles.
Poor countries like Afghanistan, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Tanzania are some of the places renowned for their rich deposits of colored stones. But these are destinations few tourists would willingly visit. As you can imagine, gem mining is an extremely challenging industry with deadly landslides, cave-ins and flash floods being commonplace. And that is before one takes into consideration the tangential dangers inherent in bribing corrupt government officials, dodging armed rebel groups and side-stepping bloodthirsty bandits.
Another problem is that gemstone deposits do not last forever. Many famous mines have now been completely, or nearly completely, exhausted over the centuries. For instance, the last jewels of the renowned Golconda diamond mines of India reached the world about 300 years ago. The legendary Kashmiri blue sapphire mines in the snow-capped Himalayas fell silent a century ago. The fantastical Mt. Mica tourmaline workings located in the backwoods of Maine, U.S.A. have all but ceased production. And the once prolific Thai ruby mines that provided almost the entire world's supply of the noble red gem from the 1960s to the 1990s are effectively played out today.
In other words, now is a great time to buy colored gems as an investment. And antique jewelry - especially antique brooches - represents a near ideal vehicle to exploit that trend.
Retro & Mid-Century Vintage Brooches & Pins for Sale on eBay
So here are a few pointers when looking to buy antique brooches and pins.
First, look for examples that are well endowed with diamonds, colored gemstones or a combination of the two. Although I am not a huge fan of white diamonds as stand-alone investments, they are still quite desirable in period jewelry - especially when they are old cuts. Another benefit of buying antique brooches set with colored stones is that you are likely to get either completely untreated or lightly treated specimens - a great boon in a world where modern gem treatments are becoming ever more invasive and difficult to detect.
I do have a word of caution, though.
Synthetic colored gems were commonly mounted in jewelry starting at the end of the Victorian period/beginning of the Edwardian period, circa 1900. Because they were the latest technological innovation, these synthetics (usually calibre cut Verneuil flame-fusion rubies or sapphires) were often mounted in very fine, expensive jewelry. It isn't unusual to see synthetic gems sitting side-by-side with natural diamonds in high karat gold or platinum settings. In fact, antique jewelry mounted with synthetics is collectible in its own right, although it will never be as valuable as similar jewelry set with fully natural stones.
In the end, it is up to you whether or not to accept vintage brooches and pins set with synthetic colored stones.
When hunting for gem-laden antique brooches, I feel it is also important to avoid examples mounted with stones that are too small. One of the age-old tricks of the jeweler who is trying to keep costs down is to mount a piece with a myriad of very small stones.
I consider gems of 5 points (0.05 carats) or smaller to fall into this category. These tiny gems cost very little, so a dazzling effect could be created for very little money. Very small gemstones are not completely valueless, but they add very little to the intrinsic value of a piece.
As investors, we want to see larger gems mounted in our jewelry if at all possible.
Our ideal antique brooch would have a central colored stone weighing in at over 1 carat, surrounded by other smaller gems greater than 5 points each in size. But I have found this condition to be almost impossible to meet at a reasonable price point these days.
Therefore, I have become more opportunistic when hunting for antique brooches. I'm willing to entertain specimens that have no large central stone at all, but are instead set with many smaller stones that are greater than 10 points each. The yellow gold and green tourmaline Edwardian brooch I describe at the beginning of this article is just such a piece.
I've also become more flexible about the colored gemstones I'm willing to buy in antique jewelry.
I like almost all colored gems from an investment perspective. The big three - rubies, sapphires and emeralds - are all classics. But it is very difficult to find antique jewelry set with larger sized specimens for a fair price. Synthetics are also a potential pitfall here.
Stepping down a tier, we come to aquamarine, beryl, spinel, tourmaline, topaz, opal and jade. These are all solid choices that are generally more readily available than the big three. These are the gem-laden antique brooches that I favor most at the moment. They provide the best combination of large gemstones, reasonable availability and low price.
Pearl brooches are another interesting choice, but you want to stick to natural pearls if at all possible. These are generally found in Victorian, Art Nouveau and Edwardian era pins - all created before circa 1915. This is due to the fact that cultured pearls first became commercially available in the mid-1910s (for baroque shapes) and around 1920 (for fully round shapes). Pearls set in jewelry from before this time will be natural.
Half pearls (also called split pearls) and tiny seed pearls are the least valuable types. They are often found in Victorian brooches as accent stones. Baroque pearls, which range from off-round to fantastically shaped, are greater in rarity and value. But fully round pearls, especially fully round pearls that are matched for size and color, are the most valuable of all pearls.
Sometimes you will come across antique brooches mounted with ultra-rare gems like color-change alexandrite, green demantoid garnet or canary yellow diamonds. These are all highly desirable, but imitations abound. So I advise caution here.
Vintage or antique brooches set with (non-fancy) red garnets, zircons, peridot, citrine, amethyst and other quartzes round out our colored gemstone possibilities. These types of stones were generally mounted in less valuable jewelry, although there are certainly exceptions to this rule. I personally avoid jewelry set with these types of stones unless they are truly exceptional, one-of-a-kind works. As a side note, garnets and peridot are up and coming in today's gem market due to the fact that they are never treated.
Victorian Antique Brooches & Pins for Sale on eBay
Of course, gems aren't the only thing to consider when investing in antique jewelry. You also want to look for antique brooches and pins that are good examples of their stylistic period. You want your 1920s Art Deco pins looking sleek and angular and your 1940s Retro brooches looking big and bold. Likewise, your 1880s Victorian brooches should be ornate and majestic while your 1900s Art Nouveau pins should exude whimsy and naturalism.
Choosing vintage jewelry with fine period style is so important that I'm often willing to loosen my gemstone requirements if I happen to find an otherwise perfect piece.
I won't talk at length about the different styles of antique brooches or pins you may encounter when searching antique stores or online listings. Instead I will list them in chronological order, followed by a brief description. If you want more information, this excellent article at The Loupe covers vintage jewelry styles in greater detail:
- Victorian (1830 to 1900) - Victorian jewelry was ornate, heavy and formal, reflecting the tremendous cultural influence of the grand British matriarch herself. Bright-cut engraved or granulated yellow gold was often combined with rubies, sapphires and diamonds to great effect. But lower value stones such as amethyst, citrine and garnets were just as popular.
- Art Nouveau (1890 to 1910) - At the close of the 19th century, jewelers became obsessed with the beauty of the natural world. Female forms with long, flowing hair, birds, flowers and vines were all prominent motifs of this style. Yellow gold and enamel were favored mediums, often set with diamonds, peridot or opals.
- Arts & Crafts (1890 to 1910) - In a rejection of the increasingly industrial nature of jewelry fabrication, Arts & Crafts jewelry was all artisan handmade. The forms incorporated into this style of jewelry could vary considerably; medieval revival, simple geometric shapes and naturalistic motifs were all experimented with at one point or another. It was common for sterling silver, enamel and lower value gems to be used with an emphasis on the rustic, handmade nature of the finished piece.
- Edwardian (1900 to 1915) - Also known in France as La Bell Époque (The Good Times), Edwardian style combined the best elements of Art Nouveau and Victorian jewelry to create colorful, dainty and somewhat fanciful pieces that still resonate with us today. Edwardian jewelry often featured expensive materials like diamonds, natural pearls, sapphires and other high value gems mounted in platinum or karat gold settings.
- Art Deco (1920 to 1940) - With its precise, rectilinear forms, Art Deco took the world by storm in the 1920s. Sleek platinum or white gold settings dripped with calibre cut emeralds, sapphires, rubies and diamonds. The dazzling "white look" was in (yellow gold was rarely seen), sometimes accented by colored stones, jet black onyx or carved Chinese jade plaques. High value materials were de rigueur.
- Retro (1935 to 1950) - A desire to escape the dreary, harsh world of the Great Depression sparked the advent of Retro jewelry. Retro design was characterized by its big, bold, often asymmetrical look. Scrollwork, ribbons and pave settings were common, often rendered in multi-colored (green, pink, white or yellow) gold. Due to the interruption of gem supplies from Southeast Asia during World War II, citrines, aquamarine, amethysts and other less expensive gems were used just as often as precious rubies, sapphires and diamonds.
- Mid-Century (1950 to 1970) - Mid-Century jewelry reflected the revived traditionalism and newfound prosperity of the post-World War II era. Playful animal motifs, stylized floral sprays and simple geometric designs were all commonly employed in Mid-Century jewelry. Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies were favorite gems during this era. But slightly less expensive stones like aquamarine, pearls, coral and jade were also popular.
- Modernist (1960 to 1980) - The 1960s brought a renaissance in artist-driven jewelry design. Avant-garde jewelers experimented with abstract designs dominated by organic or hyper-angular forms, extreme textures and unusual gemstone combinations. Almost anything goes with Modernist jewelry; it isn't unusual to see high value gems like diamonds or rubies sit side-by-side with low-value amber or moonstone.
As with any antique jewelry, I would only recommend picking up pins and brooches that are crafted in 14 karat gold or higher purity or platinum. Palladium - a sister metal to platinum - is also acceptable. However, palladium was only used in vintage jewelry for a short time during the 1940s as a platinum substitute when World War II caused the latter metal to be declared strategically important.
On a related note, good quality metalwork is too often overlooked in vintage jewelry. You want clean, competent goldwork (or platinum-work). Excess solder, porous castings, roughly finished surfaces and bulbous prongs are all to be avoided. They are not only unattractive, but also indicative of poor workmanship.
Antique brooches are one of the greatest bargains in the world of vintage jewelry today. Good examples combine the best elements of high intrinsic value, impeccable style and reasonable price in a way that no other type of vintage jewelry can rival at the moment. Savvy investors interested in tangible assets would be wise to consider buying antique brooches and pins now, while they are still cheap.
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