How to Choose Rhinestone Jewelry You’ll Want to Wear Everyday
Do you want to make your rhinestone jewelry shine bright like a diamond? Find out how to choose the best rhinestone pieces for your wardrobe here.
It’s no secret that women love jewelry. In our day and age, clothing is generally ergonomic—we don’t wear large robes and complicated like in the days of yore. Jewelry is one of the most extravagant ways that contemporary people can express their personalities.
But what about rhinestone jewelry?
Rhinestone jewelry—particularly in the style of costume jewelry—can be beautiful, but can also come out looking tacky if not worn right. If you buy rhinestone jewelry that you’re not proud to wear every day, you could be wasting money.
Thankfully, you’ve come to the right place. This article will help you pick out the perfect accessory for you to wear for day-to-day use.
Personal Style
The most important thing to consider when picking out a diamond is your personal style. There’s no point in buying jewelry if the jewelry is not “you.” Buying quality jewelry means buying something that doesn’t just end up a special occasion necklace.
If you’re the type of person who likes to be big and brash and dress up every day, you can really go all-out. Rhinestones are a great way to look extravagant without breaking the bank. Combine many of our rhinestone products to create a truly commanding presence.
If you’re someone who prefers to dress simply, choose a more subtle rhinestone product. You can choose a necklace that you can tuck into your shirt or a like-new bracelet that remains slightly hidden by your sleeves.
Simple dressers, however, also have the unique opportunity to wear statement jewelry. To do this, they’ll have to combine their normal simple style with a loud piece of jewelry. This contrast between the simple and the unique gives people looking at the outfit something to focus on and creates a truly fantastic contrast effect.
If you’re someone who’s religious and like to show your devotion in your clothing, you can buy a bracelet with rhinestone crucifixes. This is a stylish but tasteful way of showing off your devotion to your church.
You can also dress up more preppy, rebellious, and rock-and-roll styles with rhinestone earrings. No matter what direction you decide to go with your rhinestone shopping, always make sure it fits your personal style.
Price
While rhinestones are generally on the less-expensive side, it’s still important to consider how much you’re spending. Consider how much you’re willing to spend on one article of jewelry and if you’d rather buy many less-expensive pieces.
If you’re shopping for jewelry on a budget, you’re in luck. Our site offers many quality prices for jewelry for low prices. You’re guaranteed to find something that fits your personal style while staying within your budget.
Comfort
Some people think that “beauty is pain” but we just don’t think that’s true. A piece of jewelry that isn’t too comfortable might be okay to wear every once in a while. But if you want a piece that you’re going to wear every day, you’re going to have to pick something that looks good and is comfortable to wear.
Consider the weight of every product you think about buying. Wear a piece of jewelry that you own of that weight around for a day or borrow a piece from a friend. If this weight isn’t comfortable for you, do not buy that piece of jewelry.
On top of that, understand the shape that the jewelry comes in. If the product has jagged edges, and you don’t like that feeling, you’re most likely not going to wear the jewelry very often.
While you may fall in love with a piece of jewelry, buy it on impulse, and show it off for a couple of days, that excitement will eventually wear off. When it does, the comfort of the jewelry will determine whether or not you keep on wearing it.
Make sure you buy something comfortable so that you get the most bang for your buck.
Quality
Rhinestones are cheap, but that doesn’t mean they have to be poorly made. Rhinestones are imitation gems, so it will help to figure out exactly what your rhinestone is made of.
Think about the brightness of the rhinestone. One of the most beautiful aspects of rhinestones is that they flash like diamonds. A rhinestone made of lower-quality material won’t flash as much.
You should also note how easy the steel on the back is to peel off. If it’s too easy to peel off, you have a piece of jewelry that isn’t very durable.
In jewelry, it’s important to choose quality over quantity. A piece of jewelry may look nice, but that doesn’t mean much if you can only get a few uses out of it. Broken jewelry cannot be worn every day.
Trends
While it’s far more important to follow your personal style, it can also help to not look like an old fogey.
A good dictum is “you have to know the rules in order to break them.” Stay up-to-date on current fashion trends so that you can comply with them when you want to, and rebel against them in other cases. Combining current trends with personal taste is one of the best ways to develop a keen sense of style.
Rhinestone Jewelry
There’s no use denying the fact that people love jewelry. Rhinestone jewelry is one of the cheapest ways to look fashionable.
Make sure you consider your personal style, the price of the jewelry, the comfort of your pieces, the quality of the stones, and current trends before you buy, and you can do no wrong in the world of fashion.
It sparkles, it glitters, it’s glamorous and full of glitz, but is your rhinestone jewelry worth anything? Maybe you inherited a rhinestone bracelet, necklace, or brooch from Grandma. Perhaps you were searching through your jewelry box and discovered a rhinestone pin you purchased long ago. How do you know whether or not Grandma’s Jewelry has any value?
It should be as easy as 1, 2, 3, to know, but it’s not because all you know at this point is that the jewelry piece, shimmers, and glows.
Is It Rhinestone?
Swarovski from Austria introduced rhinestone jewelry in the late 1800s, and his crystals are still one of the most popular and sought-after crystals in today’s marketplace.
Sparkle and shine are not all the same, and if you want high-quality crystal, you want to remember the Swarovski name. Swarovski’s hand-cut the crystals. They weren’t mass-produced. They weren’t all the same. You can recognize Swarovski crystals by the swan logo, on the backside of bracelets and brooches. Same as the following picture.
By the time the 1900s arrived, crystals were machine cut, but Swarovski kept its high-quality manufacturing style, even though the crystals moved from hand-cut to machine-cut works of art.
Initially, crystals were all clear in color but as machinery changed the jewelry manufacturing field, the crystals became a juxtaposition of colors. Dazzling jewels and sparkling colors lined the marketplace.
What should you look for in evaluating Rhinestone Jewelry value?
Look at the bubbles or cracks in a rhinestone piece. You want to find sparkling clear crystals, that glitter in the sunshine. You don’t want bubbles and you don’t want cracks. Smooth clear rhinestones are best.
Look at the prongs
Crystals and rhinestones set in prongs should be evenly spaced. Are bends in the prongs? The facets in rhinestones should be perfect points, with even spaces, and, unique shapes.
Look at the name
Some designers are known for high-quality rhinestone jewelry because extraordinary care was taken in crafting designs. Names like Eisenberg, Coro, Boucher, Hobe, are some of the highest quality rhinestone jewelry manufacturers you can find.
Look at the time period
Art Deco designs are very popular today. These were costume jewelry designs, where the Rhinestones were cut into geometric shapes.
Art Deco was very popular in the 1920s. It’s really the time period when rhinestone jewelry had a huge boom in the marketplace.
Shimmering colors, floral motifs, geometric lines, and abstract designs popularized the art deco times.
Check out the Internet
Some rhinestone jewelry value can be less than 25.00, but many of the high-quality names will cost significantly more money. Look at what has been sold on eBay, Etsy to get an idea of what your rhinestone jewelry piece will sell for.
Jeanene Bell has written an excellent book on pricing old jewelry, called Old Jewelry.
I highly recommend this book. Beware that printed price guides can be out of date before they hit the marketplace, but they do provide a guide to evaluating rhinestone jewelry prices.
Bottomline
Rhinestone jewelry prices vary depending upon the name of the designer, the quality of the rhinestones, and the time period when they were produced. You can be sure that if the rhinestones sparkle and shine, they have market value, but the amount of value depends upon quality, name, and time.
Every person selling or buying vintage jewelry begins as a newcomer. Sometimes we are drawn to vintage jewelry because we inherit some, and we want to know the value.
I was once a newcomer. I inherited some jewelry when my mother passed away, that had been her mother’s, my grandmother’s.
I didn’t know if it was real, or vintage. I didn’t know if it was a gold or gold plate. I didn’t know if it was rhinestone or real jewels. I didn’t know if it was antique jewelry. When I look back, I knew very little about vintage jewelry. I wanted to know how much this bracelet was worth.
How do you find out what Vintage Jewelry is worth?
I researched and investigated. This is my story in investigating a vintage bracelet that I inherited that was Grandma’s bracelet. I share it with you so that you can see the process I went through in the investigation.
Evaluating Grandma’s vintage Jewelry should have been as easy to research as 1,2,3.
It wasn’t. It took time. It took education. It took investigation.
Evaluating Costume Rhinestone Jewelry takes time
The bracelet was pretty. It had beautiful rhinestones, patterned in a floral design. They were reds and blues, and the bracelet looked well made. The rhinestones sparkled. The gold had real shine. Maybe this wasn’t rhinestone, costume jewelry. Maybe I owned a bracelet, with real ruby gemstones, and real gold.
If it was real, it would be worth a fortune. It was a heavy, wide-band gold bracelet, with red and blue stones. Were they gemstones? Were they rhinestones? I had no idea.
My mind raced. If I cashed in this bracelet, I would fly to Paris and spend these inherited funds. Gold was over a thousand dollars an ounce. This bracelet had to weigh over an ounce, maybe it weighed two ounces. I didn’t have a scale. I was counting the dollars. Maybe it was worth 1000.00, maybe 2000, or even more. I was boarding an airplane, ready to fly.
I imagined I was sitting in Paris, France at an outdoor cafe. Grandma’s Jewelry was funding the trip. Mentally, I had spent the money before I knew what I had.
Begin with Experts
I rushed to a jewelry store in the shopping mall. I needed a trained eye. Jewelry store personnel attend training to teach them how to recognize real stones versus rhinestones. Most of the time they are trained in studying diamonds, but they do learn about other stones.
Did I have rhinestones or was I looking at ruby? It took less than 10 seconds to tell me I had red rhinestone jewelry.
My trip to Paris, was beginning to disappear, before it even began.
Generally speaking, the people working in jewelry stores know about new jewelry. They aren’t trained in vintage, jewelry pieces.
At the time I believed that rhinestone jewelry had little value outside of personal appeal.
That wasn’t true.
How much is Costume Rhinestone Jewelry worth?
Vintage Costume Rhinestone jewelry can command a pretty penny. Some of it costs more than jewelry made with real gemstones and real gold.
The front side had huge appeal. It was a beautiful rhinestone bracelet. It sparkled and shined
I studied the back of the bracelet. That is where you find the facts. There were no markings for silver, no markings for gold. It didn’t say 18k, 22k,14k,10k, the markings for gold used in the United States. It didn’t say GF, the marking for gold fill. It didn’t say anything about gold
That doesn’t mean it’s not gold, just because you don’t see markings. Most of the time gold is marked with markings indicating its gold, but not always. It’s not difficult to find 10k unmarked gold.
The gold on this bracelet was shiny. That’s a clue that the gold is plated and not real gold. If the gold is shiny, and it doesn’t have markings, you are looking at gold-plated costume jewelry.
My trip to Paris, was looking like it might disappear.
Tools to Evaluate Rhinestone Jewelry
I pulled the magnet out of my pocket. And it stuck right to the gold bracelet. That means that it wasn’t real gold. If the magnet attracts the bracelet, it’s not real gold, It’s a gold plate. The artist used metal to craft the bracelet and finished it with a gold plate.
Gold plate is common in costume jewelry. But don’t think for a minute that just because the piece is a gold plate, it has no value, it just might.
I was looking at rhinestone, red rhinestones set on a gold plate. I had rhinestone costume jewelry. It didn’t have real gemstones. It didn’t have real gold. Was it new, or was it old?
I took the loupe out of my pocket and examined the name. It was signed, with the word Coro. Who was Coro?
What was the history of this Rhinestone Costume Jewelry Piece
I began thinking about the person who owned the bracelet to give me a clue about the jewelry history.
Grandma had been born in Sweden, raised in Canada, and lived most of her adult life in Massachusetts, until retiring to Florida.
Maybe Coro was an artist. Maybe Coro was a jewelry manufacturer. Maybe Coro was a friend of Grandmas or a relative in the family that the bracelet had been made for? Maybe Grandma had a secret boyfriend named Coro, and he had given her the bracelet.
Maybe Coro was a person in Russia and this had been Grandma’s mother’s bracelet. I didn’t know. This vintage rhinestone bracelet looked pretty, but it was rhinestone costume jewelry, it wasn’t gold. It wasn’t ruby. Was it old? And who was Coro?
Coro and Rhinestone Costume Jewelry
I did some research on the internet. Coro was a costume jewelry manufacturer in New York, that later moved to Providence, Rhode Island. Coro produced high-end, high-quality, rhinestone costume jewelry designs, between the years 1901, and 1979. They produced rhinestone costume jewelry, that the commoner could afford.
Coro used the names, Coro, Coro Craft, and Vendome. This told me that the rhinestone costume bracelet I had, had been made before 1980. I figured that anyway because Grandma passed away in the middle of the 1980s, so I knew this vintage, costume rhinestone bracelet, had to be older than 1985.
Figuring out age, took some thinking skills, coupled with research.
Review trademarks on Rhinestone Costume Jewelry
I looked at the trademark. The name said Coro in script font. A winged horse was by the name. It said craft in print by the name. It didn’t say Corocraft, as if it was one word and it wasn’t the words Vendome, which was the name used by Coro to produce a high-end costume jewelry line.
This told me it was an older piece of jewelry made by Coro, but I still didn’t know how old. How would I find out?
What is the age of the Rhinestone Costume Jewelry
I researched the evolution of the names Coro used, and that would tell me the age of the rhinestone costume bracelet, I had inherited, that had been Grandma’s Jewelry.
Coro used artisans, and crafted quality rhinestones into jewelry pieces and made them affordable for people who wanted to wear jewelry that looked like gold, but didn’t want or couldn’t afford the high price of gold. They sold high-end costume rhinestone Jewelry designs. It was a little like their sales were geared towards the middle class, who wanted a piece of jewelry for a special occasion.
How old was my costume rhinestone bracelet made with gold plate signed by Coro? Was it an antique?
What is the signature of the Rhinestone Costume Jewelry
I looked at the signature style. Coro changed trademarks and styles of signing jewelry over the years. That often gives you a clue.
Coro began using the name Coro as a trademark in 1943 in trademarking jewelry designs. That told me that the bracelet was produced between 1943, and 1979 when Coro closed its doors.
This rhinestone costume bracelet had a script style of letters with a picture of a winged, pegasus horse by the name. This was a style used by Coro in the year 1945.
I could make a pretty good guess that this bracelet was produced shortly after the war ended, probably in 1945.
I had looked at the rhinestones. I had evaluated the gold. The age didn’t really matter. The greatest value in this bracelet was its name and the winged horse beside its name.
Rhinestone Jewelry has Unique Value. Find it.
Every piece of old, costume rhinestone jewelry, will have a unique feature. Sometimes it’s the metal or stones, other times, it’s the age, and or the craftsmanship. In this bracelet, the value was the name and scripting of the name. and the winged horse beside the name.
At the end of the day, you will need to investigate the uniqueness of each piece, but what matters most is the demand.
Rhinestone Costume Jewelry has Market Demand
Coro Jewelry is in demand. You can find many vintage pieces selling online. The winged horse beside the name made this a very collectible bracelet. The winged horse wasn’t used very long as a signature style.
Research Price Guides
I went to the library and researched price guides for Coro Jewelry designs. I went to book stores for more research.
It turns out the winged horse next to the name, made this bracelet in high demand. And here I thought it was the gold and rhinestones. It turned out it was the name and the image by the name.
Old Jewelry by Jeanenne Bell, G.G is a very good guide. This author has written several books on old jewelry and is an excellent resource.
Review Company Catalogues
Old catalogs can tell you a lot about the time period and the original cost of the jewelry you are looking for cost. It doesn’t tell you today’s value.
How much was my Rhinestone Costume bracelet worth – Conclusion
I couldn’t find an exact picture of my bracelet, but I did find comparable pieces. They were priced between $300.00, and $500.00
Take these prices guides with a grain of salt They are guides. Prices change with market demand. They can be higher or lower. They should be viewed as guides. At the end of the day, it depends upon what a buyer is willing to pay.
Grandma passed over 30 years ago, and I decided to keep her beautiful rhinestone bracelet. I packed it up and placed it in Grandma’s Jewelry box. I took it out and wore it on special occasions. It was priceless to me. It wasn’t for sale. It had been Grandma’s Jewelry, passed on to me.
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