I have noticed a startling trend in the fine vintage jewelry space. Good quality antique jewelry is getting harder and harder to find for reasonable prices. Of course if money is no object, it is still possible to buy superb pieces at outrageous prices. Alas, few of us find ourselves willing to do that.
As recently as 6 or 7 years ago, I could still walk into an antique or consignment shop and find multiple pieces of fine vintage jewelry in the $300 to $800 range. These were pieces crafted from solid karat gold and set with high quality gemstones.
Sometimes the stones set in this jewelry would be one of the big four gemstones: rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds. If this were the case, the gems would often be on the smaller side, generally less than 1/2 carat. Alternatively, I could find fine vintage jewelry with larger, centerpiece examples of valuable second tier gemstones, like aquamarine, tourmaline or spinel.
In either case, this fine vintage jewelry was eminently investable, as well as strikingly beautiful. And at only a few hundred dollars per piece, they were also affordable. Unfortunately, wicked inflation has been hard at work in the antique jewelry market.
At first, it was the pieces set with the larger first tier gemstones that skyrocketed in value. The diamond jewelry was some of the first to go, not because white diamonds are particularly rare or desirable, but because everyone quickly recognized their value.
The large rubies, emeralds and sapphires were the next to disappear. Natural rubies, in particular, are very rare stones. Their relative abundance in 20th century jewelry is actually a quirk of Burmese-Thai geological luck, never to be repeated.
Prices for antique emerald jewelry were not far behind their ruby counterparts. This is in spite of the fact that substantial new emerald deposits were discovered in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. These African sources have now come online, making significant contributions to global emerald supplies. But demand is still outstripping supply, leading to ever increasing emerald prices.
Even sapphire - the most common of the big three colored gemstones - eventually succumbed to the insatiable demand for inexpensive fine vintage jewelry. Sapphire prices had been depressed for decades due to the introduction of heat treatment techniques that were perfected in the late 1970s, followed by beryllium diffusion treatments around the year 2000. But now that the considerable inventories created via these treatment processes are finally exhausted, sapphire jewelry prices are moving inexorably higher.
Antique Ruby & Sapphire Rings For Sale
Price increases for fine vintage jewelry were not limited to pieces set with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires, though. Next, price inflation spread to good quality second tier gemstones. These are stones like non-emerald beryl, precious topaz, fancy-colored garnets, peridot, etc.
You used to be able to buy good quality antique jewelry set with these stones for $500 or $600 all day long. Now it is becoming harder and harder to find them for reasonable prices.
I recently wrote a Spotlight article about an artisan-made modernist pendant that illustrates this point perfectly. It is crafted from solid karat gold and is set with a variety of low-to-moderate value gemstones.
Yet, the asking price is $849. And it isn't a bad price either. In fact, it is a very good price - so good, in fact, that I think it would make an excellent investment.
If you had looked to purchase this piece on the second-hand market 10 or 15 years ago, I think you could have easily had it for perhaps $400 or $500. Not anymore, though. The price has permanently ratcheted upward, and there is every probability it will continue to go up.
In my opinion, the reasonable prices for fine vintage jewelry that we had enjoyed for many decades were a by-product of low precious metal and gemstone prices from the 1980s through the early 2000s. This mirrored the general collapse in commodity prices over the same period.
For example, in 1980 the price of a flawless, D-color 1 carat diamond peaked at around $60,000 a carat due to rampant inflation fears. Then the price declined until the late 1990s, when the same stone could be purchased for around $15,000. Currently, a white diamond of this size and quality would sell for about $20,000.
The price of gold followed a similar path. After achieving a secular high of around $850 in 1980, the coveted yellow metal then entered a vicious, two decade long bear market. Its value finally put in a double-bottom of $275 in 1999 and 2001. Currently, an ounce of gold trades for around $1,300.
Now that the value of jewelry raw materials has risen sharply, an impact on the pricing of existing fine vintage jewelry was inevitable. It has simply taken more than a decade for old inventory and stale prices to clear from the marketplace. Now that the overhang is gone, it is clear that the value of fine vintage jewelry will continue to rise for the foreseeable future.
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