Late last year, I decided that I wanted to sell costume brooches on Etsy after getting my vintage reselling sea legs on eBay. Costume jewelry is something that I’m naturally drawn to as someone who never quite trusted herself with fine jewelry. I also appreciate how gaudy and outlandish it can be. You could show me a $20,000 Van Cleef bracelet and it just wouldn’t interest me. A set of tacky vintage Betsey Johnson heart earrings with filigree details and giant rhinestones? Now we’re cooking with gas.
I opened my Etsy shop the very first week of 2025. To find costume brooches, I hit up my local thrift store by default. Up until this point, I browsed fashion jewelry for its sheer aesthetic value rather than its practical market one. Once I started crunching the numbers, I soon figured that thrift stores weren’t always the best places to find great deals on vintage costume jewelry for resale. So where to?
Personally, here are some of my favorite places to find great deals on vintage costume jewelry.
Small charity shops and thrift stores
I don’t know about the Goodwill where you live, but the Goodwills near me don’t sell old costume jewelry at all. If they do, it’s relatively cheap new stock from brands like Paparazzi — i.e. not stuff that is especially attractive or worth much. A lot of the good donated stuff is posted online — but more on that later.
If you’re on the hunt for affordable vintage costume jewelry, I’d skip big chains like Goodwill and The Salvation Army altogether. I recommend visiting smaller thrift stores and antique shops for vintage costume jewelry. You may need to ask to look behind the glass cabinets up front, but you can sometimes discover pretty good, affordable stuff there if you muster up the courage to ask! Plus, thrift stores have their costume jewelry separated and curated for you, so you’re not digging through piles of junk jewelry blindly.
What I’ve found is that you can often come across great prices on valuable unmarked costume jewelry at small thrift stores, since employees at these shops don’t typically have the bandwidth to research every piece. Unless something is signed or stamped “925,” you can usually snag it up for a good deal. (Heck, I’ve even picked up a “sterling” marked pin for $2.)
I like bringing along a jewelry loupe (basically a small magnifying glass with a built-in light) to look for marks and brands. Besides helping you find stamps and hallmarks, it’s a helpful tool for discerning any cosmetic damage, like peeling faux pearls and missing rhinestones.
I also recommend researching when your local secondhand shops have sale days. Even smaller stores offer text coupons and weekly storewide sales, so be sure to ask about any recurring sales or rewards program. Get to know the people who work at your thrift stores!
Flea markets
It’s no secret that I love browsing flea markets for deals on vintage goods! Usually, flea market vendors have their costume jewelry laid out in piles (likely sourced from the Goodwill bins or some other type of secondhand wholesale). Flea market jewelry tends to range anywhere from $1 to $5 a piece. Depending on the vendor’s pricing setup, fine jewelry or signed costume jewelry can be more expensive.
From experience, I’ve noticed that vendors with more organized setups tend to charge steeper prices. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though: It’s worth the extra buck or two to not have to dig through sharp, dirty jewelry pieces.
Garage sales
Nothing makes my heart sing like a neighborhood garage or rummage sale full of an old lady’s costume jewelry declutter and DIY rejects. Most of my local garage sales usually only have threadbare baby clothes and chewed-up kid toys, but I do come across a really good jewelry sale every so often. You can look up sales on Garage Sale Finder, Craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace, but I’ve had the best luck just checking out garage sale signs in my neighborhood.
Garage sales can be ridiculously cheap for buying costume jewelry — I’m talking 50 cents to a dollar cheap. Sure, you might encounter a bevy of Hallmark and Claire’s stuff, but I have found the occasional Lisner and Monet piece. Still, bear in mind that a lot of people use Google lens these days, so your mileage may vary depending on who’s hosting the sale. But most people just really want to get rid of their junk, so they price to sell.
Estate sales
When it comes to finding affordable costume jewelry at an estate sale, there are a few factors that come into play.
First of all, is there even jewelry to begin with? You want to comb through the EstateSales.net or Facebook listing photos meticulously. Usually, if there is a good amount of costume jewelry available, the estate sale company will make sure to include photos in its listing.
Don’t solely rely on pictures, though — sometimes, estate sale companies might skip taking pictures of jewelry but still have pieces displayed at the checkout counter during their sales. If you’re really curious about buying vintage costume jewelry, you can always contact the company by calling or messaging them.
The second factor is timing. Ask yourself these two questions: How badly do you want to look through the costume jewelry, and what price are you willing to pay for it?
I once went to an estate sale the first day at eight in the morning only to find all of the brooches snatched up. I’ve also gone to an estate sale the last hour of the last day and bought a whole gallon Ziploc bag of *immaculate* vintage costume rings, earrings, and bracelets for under $100.
Here’s the deal: The later you visit a sale, the more likely it is you’ll encounter picked-through inventory. But if you go later, you might land yourself with a sweet deal since the organizers will likely just want to get rid of excess stuff. And while I’m not a haggler by nature, I frankly feel more comfortable negotiating prices on the last day rather than going in hard with a lowball offer on the first day.
Bidding online
As a reseller, I’m always scouting online sources for bulk deals on vintage costume jewelry. Buying jewelry lots online is as easy as can be – you don’t even have to put on hard pants to do it. Unless you’re purchasing through a Buy It Now format, you’ll usually be bidding on sites like Hibid, ShopGoodwill, or Whatnot.
As someone who’s won a few auctions, I do feel a bit hesitant about recommending online sources for bulk buys. There are a few downsides to bidding on jewelry lots online. First of all, you can only tell so much from pictures without feeling a piece in person. The pictures aren’t always great, and you might end up with stuff with a lot of plate wear. Then, there’s the matter of stuff getting totaled in the mail. If you’re buying in bulk, this can definitely be a major issue — no one is going to individually wrap your jewelry pieces or detangle them for you if there are 100 pieces to ship.
If you’re really just out for a certain type of vintage costume jewelry piece, say a butterfly pin or AB rhinestone brooch, you can always browse platforms like Poshmark, Etsy, Ruby Lane, or eBay for single Buy It Now pieces as opposed to auction lots. (If you’re looking for where to sell vintage costume jewelry, there’s your answer!) When I’m selling vintage costume jewelry, I price my items competitively so that it’s affordable for the customer and reasonable for the time and effort I spend listing.
As someone who now resells vintage jewelry, I can’t imagine myself going back to buying new costume jewelry at department stores. Sure, some of the faux pearls and plastic rhinestones are better made these days. Personally, I just find vintage stuff more visually captivating, and there’s just so much of it that it simply feels wasteful to buy new.
Anywho, if you’re curious about some of the trinkets and treasures I’ve picked up over these past few months, be sure to check out the vintage costume jewelry on my Etsy shop!
