What Is Costume Jewelry Worth?

“They were very professional, friendly, and extremely fair on pricing some jewelry for us. I was very comfortable having them in our home.”

Costume jewelry covers everything from a drugstore brooch to a Miriam Haskell collar that took a workroom hours to wire by hand. Most of it, honestly, is worth $5 to $50 a piece (as of August 2026). But a short list of makers, in the right condition, brings hundreds and occasionally thousands of dollars, and those pieces are almost always sitting unrecognized in the same box as everything else.

What is costume jewelry actually worth? The honest baseline

Unsigned mid-century rhinestone pieces, plastic bead necklaces, and mass-market names like Avon and Sarah Coventry usually sell for $5 to $50, often in lots rather than individually. Most Monet and Napier lands in the same range. This is not a knock on the jewelry. It was made in enormous quantities, it survives in enormous quantities, and the market prices it accordingly. The point of this guide is what to look for before you treat the whole box that way.

Which costume jewelry makers are worth money? The names that change the math

A handful of American and European makers built costume jewelry to a standard that collectors now pay real money for. The names below are the ones we check for first when a box comes into the Laguna Hills warehouse or comes out of a dresser drawer somewhere in Orange County.

Miriam Haskell

Haskell pieces were wired together by hand, often around pierced brass filigree backplates, using baroque glass pearls and beads sourced from Japan and Europe. Signed pieces carry a small horseshoe or oval plaque, but the company did not mark most work before the late 1940s, so early Haskell is identified by construction, not signature. Signed bead necklaces bring $100 to $300 (as of August 2026), and single earrings less. Elaborate multi-strand pieces and the best 1940s-60s work go higher again, though we would rather set your expectation at the middle of that market than the top of it.

Trifari and the Alfred Philippe crown

Look for a crown sitting on top of the T in the Trifari mark. Alfred Philippe, who had designed for the workshops that supplied Van Cleef and Cartier, ran Trifari design from 1930 into the 1960s, and his pieces are the ones that bring money. Jelly belly animal pins, with a clear Lucite dome for a body, are the ones to look for, with good examples in the $200 to $600 range depending on the animal and condition (as of August 2026). The jeweled crown pins with big cabochons more commonly bring $50 to $150, and we would rather quote that honestly than the top of the market. Plain later Trifari, marked with a copyright symbol and no crown, is usually $15 to $60.

Eisenberg Originals

Eisenberg was a dress company first; shoplifters kept stealing the oversized Austrian crystal brooches off its dresses, so the company began selling the pins on their own. The 1930s-40s pieces marked Eisenberg Original are large, heavy, and set with exceptional stones, and they tend to bring $100 to $300 (as of August 2026), with the biggest and best crystal pieces above that. Later pieces marked Eisenberg Ice are still good jewelry but sell for much less.

Schiaparelli, Weiss, Coro Duette, and Boucher

Elsa Schiaparelli’s signed costume pieces, especially the 1950s sets with iridescent watermelon stones and strange, saturated colors, sit in the premium signed tier, roughly $100 to $500 on the asking side (read August 2026), with the signature usually in script on a small plate or clip. We have no dated auction result of our own to quote above that, so we do not. Weiss made some of the best rhinestone work of the 1950s. Most of it brings $25 to $100 (read August 2026), with the black japanned pieces and figural butterflies at the top of that range or a bit above. A Coro Duette is a brooch that splits into two dress clips on a patented frame. A Duette in good condition sits around $75 to $125 (as of August 2026), and the scarce figurals, owls and horse heads and quivering flowers, go above that. Marcel Boucher pieces, frequently marked with a number as well as the name, run roughly $50 to $250 for good figurals (as of August 2026).

What has costume jewelry actually sold for at auction?

The ranges above are mostly asking prices from eBay and Ruby Lane. Auction houses publish what pieces actually sold for, and those numbers are the honest check on any range, ours included. Every result below is a realized price from the auction house’s own lot record, with the date of the sale.

Two things stand out. Single good pieces land inside or above their estimates: the jelly belly swan beat its high estimate, and the Haskell set landed inside its range. Lots go the other way. Three signed Haskell brooches sold together for $119, under their low estimate, and thirteen Haskell pieces in one group came to about $26 a piece. The same jewelry is worth more read and sold one by one than pushed across a counter as a pile, which is the single most useful thing to know before anyone quotes you a number for the box.

Is it Bakelite? How to test it honestly

Bakelite is an early phenolic plastic, heavy and dense, made into bangles, figural pins, and beads mostly in the 1930s and 40s. Ordinary pieces are honest money, not fortunes: a regional Virginia auction in 2024 sold a 15-piece carved lot for $125. Figural pins at a dedicated collection sale (Bonhams, Los Angeles, January 2022) realized $191 to $765, and the only figural pin we found above $1,000 was a hearts-and-arrow piece at $1,464 (Bonhams, New York, 2009). The real top of the category is bangles: Philadelphia laminated hinged bangles realized $6,375 (January 2022) and $5,490 (2009), and a polka dot pair $4,462.50 (January 2022). Those are curated single-owner sales, so read them as ceilings, not as what a carved bangle in a drawer will bring.

Two honest tests. Run the piece under hot tap water for thirty seconds and smell it: real Bakelite gives off a sharp chemical smell, like formaldehyde or old electronics. Or touch a cotton swab of Simichrome polish or 409 cleaner to an inconspicuous spot: on most Bakelite the swab turns yellow. Skip the hot pin test you may have read about. It scars the piece, and the fumes are genuinely bad for you. Black Bakelite sometimes fails the swab test even when it is real, which is one more reason to let someone who handles it regularly make the final call.

How to find the maker's mark: where the marks hide

Signatures on costume jewelry are small and rarely where you expect them. Check with a magnifier or your phone camera zoomed in:

• The pin stem or the flat plate behind a brooch
• The tongue or fold-over of a necklace clasp
• A tiny applied plaque or cartouche soldered to the back
• The back of a single leaf or petal in a figural casting
• The underside of an earring clip
• The hook end of a bracelet

An unsigned piece is not automatically a cheap piece. Early Haskell, much 1930s work, and pieces that lost a marked element can all be unsigned and still valuable. Weight, prong-set stones instead of glued ones, and hand-finished backs are the tells.

Does condition matter on costume jewelry? Verdigris and complete sets

Condition moves prices hard in this category. Verdigris, the fuzzy green corrosion that grows on base metal, is the killer: it spreads, it undercuts plating, and it is very difficult to remove without damage. A piece with active verdigris can lose most of its value. Missing stones matter too, and clumsy replacements in the wrong cut or color matter more. Haskell pearls with peeling coatings, darkened rhodium, and repainted enamel all pull prices down.

Completeness pushes the other way. A parure is a matched set, typically necklace, bracelet, earrings, and brooch, and a complete signed parure is worth more than the same four pieces sold separately, often meaningfully more. Original boxes and tags help. If a set was kept together for seventy years, keep it together now.

Is a whole box of costume jewelry worth anything?

Usually something, and occasionally a great deal more than it looks. Most boxes are honestly modest, with unsigned and mass-market pieces bringing $5 to $50 each (as of August 2026) and usually selling as a lot, but one crown Trifari, Haskell necklace, Eisenberg Original, or carved Bakelite bangle can outprice the rest of the box combined.

That is why one blended number for the pile is the wrong first answer. The auction records above show the pattern: signed pieces read and sold one by one hold their estimates, and the same pieces pushed into a group fall under them. Have every clasp checked, let the signed and tested pieces be priced on their own, and then a fair lot price for the remaining tray is easy to judge.

Should I donate old costume jewelry or have it looked at first?

Have it looked at first, once, before anything goes in a donation bag. Unwanted and worthless are different things, and the one signed or Bakelite piece in a tray is almost always the one that gets misfiled by looks, because Bakelite reads as cheap plastic to anyone who has not tested it and a worn signature on a clasp is easy to miss.

A reading does not commit you to selling anything. Once you know which pieces are which, selling some and donating the rest is an easy decision made once, with no wondering later. Text photos of the fronts and backs to (949) 449-1255 and we will tell you the same day whether the box deserves a closer look.

How to sort an inherited box of costume jewelry

If you have inherited a jewelry box or a dresser full of it, here is the order we would work in:

• Clean nothing. No dips, no polish, no toothbrush. Cleaning removes patina, lifts finishes, and destroys the coating on glass pearls.
• Pull everything with any mark at all into one pile, even marks you cannot read.
• From the unsigned pieces, pull anything heavy for its size, anything with prong-set stones, and anything with wired or hand-built construction on the back.
• Warm-water test the chunky plastic bangles and figural pins for Bakelite.
• Leave single earrings, plastic beads, and obviously modern pieces in a lot pile. They still have value, just by the tray rather than by the piece.
• If someone offers one number for the whole box, ask them to name the signed pieces first and what each is worth on its own. A buyer who has actually read the box can do that in a minute, and the answer tells you whether the pile price is fair.

Where to sell a box of costume jewelry

Photograph the pieces in daylight, fronts and backs, with a close shot of any mark you find. Do nothing else to them. Then talk to a buyer who handles costume jewelry every week, not a general resale shop that will weigh the sterling and guess at the rest. We are dealers, not certified appraisers, and our offers reflect the real collector markets we sell into. We look at boxes like this constantly, we come to you anywhere in Southern California, we explain what each piece is as we go, and if you like the number we pay cash on the spot.