HAGJewels

Vintage Costume Jewelry, a.k.a reused Jewelry has a history! It brings its own legends with it and gives you a chance to add to it. New jewelry has sentiment only to the purchaser, reused has generations. What would you rather wear for your wedding and hand down to your daughter for hers? A brand new necklace or one that had been worn by you, your mother, and her mother?

Older pieces come from an elegant era long gone. A time of classic beauty. Where men wore tuxedos and women wore gowns. Old costume jewelry has history. Most pieces are 60 or more years old. Who knows what movie star or singer wore one of our pieces that we have now. Maybe Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or Doris Day. They are re-usable because they can still be worn in style today.

Look at a stand of rhinestone pins in a department store, and you will most likely notice some which have already lost some stones, before wearing! That is not the case with vintage jewelry: they have been 'test driven' and if they have lasted this long, they will probably last many more years to come.

It is easier to express your personal style with items from previous eras, and you can make a statement saying 'I love art deco' or 'The Seventies were Groovy!' by wearing jewelry from that period.

Vintage jewelry is actually an investment, whereas buying new mass produced jewelry is just money down the drain. If someone wants a 1950's pin now, chances are someone else will want it next year as well. But who wants Italian slide charms now, while three years ago people couldn't get enough of them?

Personally, I love the history that previously owned jewelry has as opposed to "new", although I do buy and wear new jewelry as well as my older stuff. I guess the older jewelry brings back memories of how it used to be, either for ourselves or for someone we've never met. It just has an undefineable attraction and creates a desire to own it and wear it for so many different reasons.

Collecting used costume jewelry is like *preserving the past* for future generations. It is so sad to see a beautiful piece that is almost beyond repair, because someone considered it *junk jewelry* and didn't take care of it. The workmanship of newer pieces cannot compare to that of vintage or antique jewelry. Alot of times Vintage jewelry are almost one of a kind...or close to it. Personally....when I wear a vintage piece and get lots of compliments....I wonder if the original owner did too. It makes me wonder what kind of person loved it before me....their lifestyle, their background, their dreams. Did my pieces have a prominent place in the jewelry box...did it lay next to a one of a kind Miriam Haskell?? LOL I feel, vintage jewelry is the *true* BLING of yesterday.

I love old jewelry because I'm a hopeless romantic! I first loved Juliet's cross pendant in Romeo and Juliet. Then I loved the the jeweled necklace from The Three Musketeers, as worn by the Queen. I loved the glass crystal necklace worn by Briar Rose in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. All the exquisite jewelry in Marie (Antoinette). And all the other period films, stories with their lockets and other gewgaws.

When I'm lucky enough to acquire an old piece, I feel like I'm somehow a part of those stories.

I love the art deco/nouveau style and the almost lost quality. I also love that the cost of the majority of that I have is about equal to that of what a single new retail diamond would have cost.