I love costume jewelry, especially vintage items. I am always on the lookout for items, as I am sure you are if you sell or collect vintage costume jewelry.
Have you ever found an unsigned piece that you knew should be signed? You spend hours pouring over books, surfing the web, googling every keyword you can think of and still find yourself stumped? This has happened to me so many times in the past.
Finally I decided to join a few vintage jewelry groups. What a resource these groups are. Each one of them has a bevy of real experts in all kinds of areas relating to vintage jewelry. The knowledge base is amazing. Some are even authors of some of the costume jewelry books we all use to research our jewelry finds. They are always so willing to answer your questions.
Even if you don’t post to the groups I find you can still learn a tremendous amount about vintage jewelry. Sometimes the treads are funny, others are entertaining and as in real life sometimes they get a bit heated. Sometimes the “experts” do not agree and I suppose that is to be expected. These groups are fairly large and have members from all over the world. The one thing the treads always have in common is that you can always find out something new about vintage costume jewelry.
As a website owner, I often receive questions from customers or potential customers about vintage jewelry. Those that I do not feel comfortable answering I can direct to the group.
Another reason to join is you can’t know everything. A while back, I won a silent auction for a huge lot of old, and I mean old, Victorian, and some Deco jewelry. I was not in my comfort zone at the time! Just by reading the posts I was able to find out which books to purchase to help me decipher what I had. In this lot, it turns out I had real butterfly wing jewelry, a Victorian mesh bracelet, old ivory buttons and so much more.
I know for a fact that I would have no where near the knowledge about vintage costume jewelry without my wonderful jewelry group pals!
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