5 Tips for Buying Antique and Estate Jewelry

The author modeling a silver and blister pearl necklace created by The Kalo Shop in Chicago that is part of the personal collection of Kalo collector and Jewelry History Series presenter John P. Walcher.
Last week I was in Miami for The Original Miami Beach Antique Show and the following happened, in this order:

--I heard a number of other informative presentations, including one on World War II “Sweetheart Jewelry” by Jan Krulick and another from John P. Walcher of Chicago auction house Toomey & Co. on the Cheap Jewelry Websites made in the Windy City during the Arts & Crafts movement, particularly at The Kalo Shop;

Along the way, I stopped to chat with dealers at the show to get their advice on antique and estate jewelry buying for those who are opening a store (brick-and-mortar or online), taking over the buying responsibilities at an established store or looking to get into the business.

The advice I heard repeated most often wasn’t so much advice as it was a statement of fact: second-hand buying is mainly about experience. Being a good buyer comes from years of looking at and handling jewelry and, as with anything else, making mistakes along the way.

“The more you handle, the better you get,” New York-based dealer Hartley Brown told me at his booth while allowing me to handle some beautiful mandarin garnets. “It’s experience.”

And when I stopped by the booth of Kurt Rother of Los Angeles-based Excalibur on Saturday afternoon and asked him how to tell if a piece of allegedly antique jewelry is a reproduction, he summed it up like this: “years of experience.” There were, however, a few specific tips that I was able to glean from the dealers I spoke with in Miami.