Vintage Bakelite Jewelry
are there any tidbits from the costume jewelry dealer grapevine?.
Some tidbits from the costume jewelry dealer grapevine...
-There's quite a bit of phony Bakelite out there. There's believed to be
a workshop in Oregon turning out "Fakelite", using one of the major
books on the subject as a catalogue, if you will. It is difficult to
distinguish from real vintage Bakelite. Add to that the difficulty of
distinguishing other early plastics (celluloid, catalin, urea
formaldehyde, others) from Bakelite, and you see why the once-booming
Bakelite market has gone South. (Some dealers don't even bother to
make distinctions between early plastics and sell all early plastic
pieces--that are obviously not Lucite--as Bakelite. I feel this is
wrong.) Perhaps prices on Bakelite will return to something
reasonable now. I sold a butterscotch bangle to a lady for $10 last
weekend. She was delighted to get it, though it looked too new to me
to be real Bakelite and I did *not* represent it as such.
-Beware "jelly bellies", particularly marked Trifari Sterling. A
Trifari jelly belly is one of the most sought after of costume jewelry
pieces (a jelly belly is a figural pin with a Lucite center), so I
suppose it was inevitable that someone would start cranking out fakes.
A dealer friend back East was offered "all the Trifari Sterling jelly
bellies you want", for $40 each, and the woman who offered them clearly
knew they were fakes. I have never even seen a sterling jelly belly,
that's how hard to come by they are.
-That most sought after of designers, Eisenberg Originals, is now being
blatantly copied. Word has it that other Eisenberg marks, such as
"Eisenberg" and "Eisenberg Ice" are not being phonied, since the big money
is in jewelry marked "Eisenberg Original". An Eisenberg Original should
be from the Forties or thereabouts. If you're offered a piece that looks
too new, beware.
-Manufacturers themselves sometimes reissue older lines of jewelry. Usually,
though, you can easily tell the repros because they have the *current*
manufacturer's mark.
-I have heard that someone is faking Coro Duettes now, though I don't
have any detail. A Duette is two identical or complementary pins which,
when placed in a special pinback device, form one larger pin. The designs
can be quite striking. Duettes done in sterling fetch the highest prices.
Again, examine the jewelry closely to see if its apparent age matches its
advertised age.
As always, I'm buying vintage rhinestone costume jewelry (in good
condition or even broken) and am always open to offers for trades,
etc. I have some Coro sterling gold vermeil pieces (one's a Coro
Craft, one's a Coro Made in Mexico Silver piece) that I'd be willing to
trade for Franciscan dinnerware or serving pieces