Vintage Costume Jewelry - What Affects Pricing and Value?

Vintage costume jewelry is a far cry from the fashion pieces you will find in most department stores. In fact, while new costume jewelry will literally depreciate in value, signed vintage jewelry from the 1920's through the late 1960's and early 70's is still appreciating in value. Thousands of jewelry enthusiasts are finding vintage jewelry collecting profitable-when they know what to look for when buying.
Identifying the valuable vintage costume necklaces, rings, and other pieces to collect boils down to knowing what actually determines value on the market. No precious metals or gemstones are used to make costume pieces but some jewelry is plated with precious metals like gold or silver. In addition, vintage costume jewelry pieces were produced en masse at factories unlike fine jewelry.
Some costume designs have become so popular that they now are worth many times their original sale price. Making big money is possible when collecting but you need to understand what determines value so you can purchase the most profitable pieces to resale. Pricing for vintage pieces can be broken down into five main components:
Rarity
Originality of Design
Demand
Quality of Materials and Craftsmanship
Final Condition
The supply of vintage jewelry varies greatly and this affects pricing in a big way. The great diversity of manufacturers also created vast differences in batch sizes. Profits tend to be lower when talking about pieces made by the larger players like Coro and Accessocraft who produced jewelry in large batches. DeMario, McClelland, and other small companies might only have batch sizes numbering in the hundreds.
Because they are so much rarer, those pieces from the smaller companies will almost always sell for more than something from one larger manufacturers-but this is only a guide and not a steadfast rule. But beware, even the major costume jewelry manufacturers like Trifari and Coro would have limited runs of specialty pieces that are now considered quite valuable due to their rarity-just as is the case with the smaller companies.
The demand varies greatly among costume jewelry pieces and can play a larger role than any other variable when it comes to final price determination. What ultimately determines demand is difficult to isolate but its affect upon pricing is definite: greater demand means higher prices.
The big collectibles right now commanding top dollar are signed vintage necklaces, earrings, and bracelets from Miriam Haskell. Learning which pieces are collectible and which are just pretty is the most critical step towards collecting for a profit. Profits tend to be highest for investors when they do their homework and avoid purchasing pieces they like as opposed to the ones they know to be profitable.
Demand is probably affected by the originality of the design more than anything else. It is not uncommon for experienced investors to avoid the signed vintage jewelry pieces because their demand can make collecting them less profitable than the unsigned pieces.
Besides, the fact remains that a rather significant portion of the entire vintage costume stock is unsigned because many companies did not begin signing pieces until the 1940's and beyond. Collectors can optimize profits by locating the unsigned pieces by the top manufacturers and this is made possible by knowing the design traits of each of the major manufacturers. To learn more about the particular design tendencies of the vintage costume jewelry manufacturers, a great resource is: "Costume Jewelry: A Practical Handbook and Value Guide" by Fred Rezazedeh.
For More Information on costume jewelry Please visit our main jewellery website here: http://www.myjewelersplace.com