If you have already read Part 1 of our series on valuing your vintage jewelry, you know that vintage costume jewelry can have several different kinds of value depending on how and where it is sold. In Part 2, you learned what to look for when deciding whether a piece may be worth further investigation.
This article is the next step: how to research value. Once you have identified a piece and recognized that it may have desirable qualities, the next question becomes: what are similar pieces actually selling for?
That is where real research comes in. In this part of the series, you will learn how to use sold listings, auction records, WorthPoint, image search, and other online sources to build a more realistic idea of value.
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Once you have identified what you have—or at least narrowed down the maker, age, materials and style—the next step is to research what similar pieces are actually selling for.
Pricing historically was done primarily through books and price guides. Those resources can still be extremely useful for identification, terminology, maker history and background, but the prices themselves can become outdated quickly. Value changes as collector tastes, supply and demand change.
The best way to understand what something is worth today is to study what buyers are actually paying.
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Before looking for comparable prices, identify your piece as accurately as possible.
Look at:
Small differences can matter enormously. Two pieces by the same designer can have very different values depending on design, rarity, stones, condition and collector demand.
The more accurately you identify the piece, the better your comparable sales will be.
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Begin with places where you can find completed sales.
Some of the most useful sources are:
The goal is to find pieces that are as close as possible to yours in maker, design, condition, size, materials and rarity.
A brooch by the same designer is not automatically a good comparable if one is a common small design and the other is a rare, elaborate piece.
And don't rely too heavily on one sale. An unusually high result may have involved two determined bidders, while an unusually low result could have come from poor photographs, a badly titled listing or limited exposure. Several comparable sales are much more useful because they begin to show a pattern.
When looking at auction-house records, make sure you understand what the number represents.
The hammer price is not necessarily what the buyer ultimately paid. Buyer's premiums and other charges may be added on top.
For valuation purposes, pay attention to the hammer price, the auction house, the date of sale and how closely the piece actually compares to yours.
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Google Images can be one of the most useful tools when you don't know exactly what you have.
Search using the maker plus a description of the piece, stones, design or construction.
You can also use Google Lens or image search to look for exact or extremely comparable examples. This can be particularly helpful, but caution is needed, as many visually similar pieces are not necessarily meaningful comparables.
This can lead you to:
Sometimes an image search will identify a piece much faster than trying to guess exactly how another seller described it or vice versa.
Once you find a match, don't stop at the image. Follow the result and determine whether the price shown was an asking price or an actual sale.
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WorthPoint is particularly useful for pieces that don't appear frequently.
It can give you access to older sales that have disappeared from eBay and other websites and can help identify rare designs, variations and historical pricing.
But the date matters.
A piece selling for $300 ten years ago does not automatically mean it is worth $300 today. Some areas of vintage jewelry have increased in popularity while others have softened.
Older results are most useful when you compare them with whatever evidence you can find from the current market.
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After looking at sold results, look at pieces currently being offered for sale.
That may include:
Current listings can tell you something sold results cannot: how much competition is currently on the market.
If there are fifty similar pieces available and very few are selling, that tells you something.
If there are almost none available and sold examples consistently disappear quickly, that tells you something too.
But remember: an asking price is not a sale price.
Someone asking $900 for a necklace does not make the necklace worth $900.
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You will often never find your exact piece.
Instead, look for a pattern among comparable pieces.
For example, perhaps you find:
That pattern may tell you far more than finding one identical piece that sold five years ago.
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Condition matters, but so does demand.
Rare does not automatically mean valuable.
Something can be extremely scarce simply because few were made—or because very few people wanted it in the first place.
Rarity becomes particularly important when it is combined with collector demand.
Likewise, a relatively common piece by a desirable maker may still command a strong price because many collectors are actively looking for it.
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Once you have gathered enough comparable information, think in terms of a range rather than one exact number.
Look at the strongest comparable sales, discard obvious outliers and consider where most similar examples fall. Or, take an average of the higher and lower sales and fall somewhere in the middle.
That gives you a much more realistic picture of the market than simply finding the highest price online and assuming your piece is worth the same amount.
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So far in this series, we have covered what value means, what to look for, and how to research comparable results. In the final part of this series, we’ll put the process into practice using a real piece of vintage costume jewelry, showing step by step how comparable sales, condition, rarity, demand and selling venue come together to establish a realistic value range.
