The Vintage Costume Jewelry Collecting Fad

Photo Credit: Housing Works Thrift Shop

Vintage costume jewelry is a hot trend right now. A quick search on eBay will reveal over half a million examples for sale, ranging from the 1930s to the 1980s. And it sells too. Almost 200,000 pieces of vintage costume jewelry have sold on the online auction giant over the past six months.

Although inexpensive jewelry has been with us since the time of the Roman Empire, modern costume jewelry really came about in the 1920s. This was a period of incredible prosperity and loosening social mores for women. Newly independent women began looking for ways to experiment with jewelry as a fashion accessory. Unfortunately, traditional jewelry made from precious metals and gemstones was far too expensive to wear casually or haphazardly.

This was the pivotal moment in history when the renowned French fashion designer, Coco Chanel, spawned an industry. In the late 1920s she released a line of costume jewelry that allowed women to indulge in their wildest jewelry fantasies without breaking the bank. She was soon followed by other well-recognized vintage costume jewelry brands, such as Trifari, Coro, Christian Dior, Miriam Haskell, and Napier.

The nascent costume jewelry industry soon received an unexpected boost from the advent of World War II. This global conflict restricted access to traditional precious materials. Suddenly gold and platinum from South Africa no longer reached Nazi-occupied Europe. Likewise, rubies and sapphires from Burma were cut off from the West by the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia.

This meant that costume jewelry was often the only game in town. It was made from inexpensive and readily available materials like gilt-brass, silver, plastic and glass rhinestones. However, considerable effort went into its design and marketing to ensure a high quality product that appealed to a broad range of women.

In spite of its storied history and interesting designs, there is something about vintage costume jewelry that really bothers me. Specifically, I'm worried about the extreme prices that some people are willing to pay for what amounts to faux jewelry. To be blunt, costume jewelry - even brand-name vintage pieces - shouldn't be reaching the exceptionally high prices that it is.

The vintage costume jewelry market has all the hallmarks of a fad.

For example, almost 600 eBay listings of vintage costume jewelry from major makers sold within the past 6 months (as of May 2019) for more than $200. Fully 49 examples even sold for more than $1,000. And there are undoubtedly many other high value sales of lesser known makers as well.

Now many people might argue that it isn't possible to buy "fine" jewelry - vintage or otherwise - for only a few hundred dollars. So what is wrong with paying a couple C-notes for a very nice (and sometimes historically significant) piece of vintage costume jewelry?

My complaint is that vintage costume jewelry is not (and never will be) investment grade. Sure, if you love it, buy it. Just be aware that you are collecting, not investing. Vintage costume jewelry will never reliably appreciate in value like a piece of fine vintage jewelry.

Let's examine a real life comparison between a piece of vintage costume jewelry and a piece of fine, albeit modern, jewelry:

Photo Credit: Floridas-Ultimate-Treasures & Cutterstone

The piece on the left is a late 1940s Jewels of Tanjore brooch by Trifari. It is made from vermeil (gold plated sterling silver) and set with glass stones. The design was inspired by the Indian jewelry of the British Maharajas. It sold on eBay on November 11, 2018 for $359.95 (plus $6.00 shipping).

The contemporary Modernist piece on the right is a sterling silver and 14 karat gold pendant by Cutterstone, a small artisan jeweler based in Calimesa, California. The piece was cast using a hand-carved cuttlebone mold, which is destroyed in the production process. It was then laboriously hand-finished and set with a natural, 1.27 carat purple-pink, marquise-cut sapphire and a smaller, 0.24 carat beryllium-diffused, round-cut orange sapphire. I purchased it on Etsy in 2016 for $365 (plus $3.50 shipping).

The Trifari Jewels of Tanjore brooch was mass-produced in a factory by the thousands. It is likely that hundreds of them are still extant today. I (generously) estimate the scrap value of the sterling silver used in it at $10 to $12.

In contrast, the Cutterstone pendant was individually designed and hand-made by an experienced craftsman. And due to the cuttlebone casting, there will only ever be one in existence. I estimate the intrinsic value of this piece to conservatively be around $300. As an FYI, I featured a pair of luscious Cutterstone sterling silver earrings in one of my recent Spotlight posts.

The vintage Trifari piece cost $365.95, delivered; the Modernist Cutterstone piece cost $368.50, delivered. They were effectively the same price.

Affordable Vintage Karat Gold Jewelry For Sale

And yet the Cutterstone pendant is a one-of-a-kind work of art that will undoubtedly age into a fine antique over time. Its organic lines and superb sense of proportions are truly stunning. The very real, very enticing, very high quality sapphires merely sweeten the deal. It is a consummate investment grade piece of jewelry.

On the other hand, this is as good as it's ever going to get for the Trifari piece. It is a mass-produced brooch with very little intrinsic value. Its design is solid, but not particularly original or groundbreaking (there was a lot of Indian-style jewelry being released in the 1940s and 1950s). Yes, it does have a famous brand name attached to it, but it is a name intimately associated with costume jewelry. Trifari is no Tiffany & Co. or Cartier. This is not an investment-oriented piece of jewelry, despite the fact that price trends have been quite favorable for vintage costume jewelry over the past decade.

One of these pieces is a great buy at $370 and one is not. The worst part is that both pieces use the same primary medium - sterling silver. Yet there is still a world of difference between them.

In my opinion it would be wise for jewelry collectors and connoisseurs to avoid buying vintage costume pieces at anywhere above $100 or possibly $200. It is simply too easy to find compelling examples of real jewelry at the latter price point to fool around with fake or junk jewelry, vintage or not.