Coro Jewelry Value: Duettes, Corocraft, Vendome and the Plain Script

Coro is the second name families find in an old jewelry box, right behind Trifari, and it confuses people for a simple reason. The same company put several different names on the back of its jewelry, and the names meant different things. Plain Coro was the volume line. Corocraft was the better line. Vendome was the top line, sold in the stores that would not carry the rest. This guide reads those marks and puts modest, dated numbers on each one.

Is Coro jewelry worth anything?

Yes, and the amount depends on which Coro line made it far more than on how old it is. The company began as Cohn and Rosenberger, founded in New York in 1901 by Emanuel Cohn and Carl Rosenberger, first as sellers of other makers’ jewelry and then as a manufacturer. In 1929 it built a plant on Point Street in Providence, Rhode Island, the center of the American costume trade, which grew to employ thousands and which the building’s National Register nomination describes as the largest manufacturer of costume jewelry in the 1950s and 1960s. The name Coro, from the first letters of Cohn and Rosenberger, became the corporate name in 1943.

That scale is the whole story of Coro value. A company that made millions of pieces left millions behind, so the ordinary script-marked Coro pin or earring set brings $10 to $50 today, as of September 2026, and sells in lots. The pieces collectors compete for were made in smaller numbers or to a higher standard: the Duettes on their patented frame, the enamel and rhinestone figurals marked Corocraft, and the Austrian crystal and bead sets marked Vendome. The costume jewelry value guide puts Coro beside Trifari, Haskell and Eisenberg; this page goes line by line.

What is the difference between Coro, Corocraft and Vendome?

They are three price tiers from one factory, and the mark tells you which tier you are holding. Coro, usually in a script signature, was the everyday line. Corocraft, written as one word or as Coro Craft with a winged horse beside it, was introduced in the 1930s as the better line; published lists give 1933 or 1937 for its start, so the copy here says the 1930s. Its most collected pieces are the enamel and rhinestone figurals of the late 1930s and 1940s, many of them made in sterling because the base white metal costume makers normally used was restricted in the war years. Vendome was created in 1944 as the top of the house and became prominent in the 1950s, when it was sold through stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue that did not carry ordinary Coro; it ran into the 1970s, and most accounts end it about 1970. Its signature is faceted Austrian crystal, beads, and heavy plating that has often survived intact.

Two cautions on that table. The Vendome figures are a price guide author’s estimates published in Antique Trader in March 2024, not sales; we found no house-published auction result for a Vendome parure, and dealer asks for Vendome sets run well above these numbers. And the winged horse places a piece rather than dating it; the makers marks guide explains why no single year can be attached to it.

What is a Coro Duette worth, and why does the frame matter?

A Duette is a brooch that comes apart. Two clips sit in a metal carrier so they can be worn together as one brooch or separately on a neckline, a hat or a lapel. The mechanism was invented by Gaston Candas, a jeweler in Paris, whose US patent 1,798,867 for a brooch and the like was filed on May 31, 1930 and granted on March 31, 1931; Coro built its Duette on that patent, and the number is stamped on the frames, sometimes beside a separate design patent number for the clips themselves. The frame is the point. A Duette with both clips and a carrier that still grips is worth the $75 to $125 the market pays for a good one; the clips alone, sorted into different piles of the box, are two small dress clips.

The Duettes worth more are the figurals and the tremblers. Owls, horse heads, birds, and the Quivering Camellia, a flower on a spring that shakes as the wearer moves, were designed in the late 1930s and 1940s and are the ones collectors name. A price guide published in Antique Trader in June 2023 put a 1938 Quivering Camellia Duette at $400 to $550; that is an estimate for the best-known form, and a record is a ceiling, not an expectation. The realized results below show how far the ordinary ones sit from it.

Who designed Coro jewelry? Was it Adolph Katz?

This is the most repeated mistake about the company, and it matters because dealers price by the name. Adolph Katz was a Coro vice president, in charge of the design side from the mid-1920s by some accounts, and his name appears on hundreds of the company’s design patents because he signed them as the firm’s representative. Collectors and sellers have called him the designer for decades. The design room itself was run by Gene Verri, born Verrecchia, who by most accounts joined in 1933 and stayed until 1963, and a bench of other designers whose names surface on individual patents. So a piece described as designed by Adolph Katz is a Coro piece whose patent Katz signed; the description is a habit of the trade, not a provenance, and it should not add a dollar to the price.

How do I date Coro jewelry from the mark?

Read the back under a bright light with the phone camera zoomed in. The dating cliffs that hold across all costume makers hold for Coro too: a patent number or Pat. Pend. means the 1930s to mid-1950s, a small c in a circle means the design is 1955 or later, and STERLING on a costume mark clusters in the war years, roughly 1942 to 1947, when base metal was restricted. Corocraft in sterling belongs before 1950 by the collector accounts we found. Beyond those cliffs, Coro used dozens of line names and several versions of its script, and the published lists of which version belongs to which years disagree, so this guide prints no year-by-year table; date a piece from construction and style once the cliffs have placed it.

• Coro Duette with a patent number and no copyright symbol: 1931 to the mid-1950s, the era collectors chase.
• Coro Craft or Corocraft with Sterling: the war years, roughly 1942 to 1947, and by collector accounts not later than 1950.
• Pegasus beside Coro Craft: late 1930s through the 1950s; the horse places the piece, the other marks date it.
• Vendome: 1944 onward, and most surviving pieces are 1950s and 1960s.
• Coro in script with a copyright symbol: 1955 or later, and usually the 1960s and 1970s volume production.

What has Coro actually sold for at auction?

Realized results, not asking prices, are the only numbers worth carrying into a sale. These are the ones we could verify on the auction house’s own pages, with the house and the date. Note how ordinary the money is, and note the one that did not sell.

Notice the shape. The best money went to figurals, and even then the two Corocraft birds shared their lot with a Trifari bird to reach a few hundred dollars each. A trembler Duette, one of the forms the internet calls valuable, brought $83 in 2010. And the horse head Duette, a design dealers list in the hundreds, found no buyer at all with two stones missing, which is the honest lesson: on Coro, condition and completeness decide the price more than the design does. Asking prices on retail sites run well above every figure here; an ask is what a seller hopes for, never a value.

Is Coro still made? What happened to the company?

The company collectors mean ended in 1979. Carl Rosenberger died in 1957 and his son Gerald ran Coro until his own death in 1967. In 1969 the family sold to Richton International, which kept making Coro jewelry for about a decade and closed the Point Street plant in 1979. A Canadian branch under separate ownership went on using the Coro name into the early 1990s, which is why a few late pieces marked Coro exist that no American factory made. So Coro has no modern successor the way Trifari does, and a piece marked Coro is at least forty-five years old, which is the one thing the name does guarantee.

What should I not do to Coro jewelry before selling it?

• Do not separate a Duette. Frame and both clips stay together; the mechanism is most of the value.
• Do not oil or force a stiff Duette carrier. A gripping mechanism is worth more than a loose one, and a broken one is worth two dress clips.
• Do not polish it. The plating is part of the value, and metal polish strips it and grays the foil behind the rhinestones.
• Do not clean rhinestone pieces with liquid. Water gets under the foil backs and dulls them permanently.
• Do not replace a missing stone with a modern one. A missing stone is an honest deduction; a wrong replacement is a bigger one.
• Do not split a Vendome set. A parure, the necklace, bracelet and earrings together, is worth more complete than sold one at a time, and more again in its original box.
• Do not sell the box at one blended price before every clasp has been read. One Duette or Corocraft figural regularly outprices the rest of the tray.

How we buy Coro

We buy costume jewelry outright, Coro very much included. Duettes, Corocraft figurals and Vendome sets are priced individually, in front of you, with the line explained as we go; the modest script-marked remainder gets one honest lot offer; and everything is paid for in cash the same visit. Across Southern California that is a free house call or an appointment at our Laguna Hills warehouse, the San Fernando Valley included. Outside California we buy by video call: the price is agreed on the call, we pay by PayPal before you ship, and the shipping is on us. The where-to-sell guide compares every route honestly, and the Trifari and Miriam Haskell guides cover the two names most often found in the same box.