Vintage Rhinestone Jewelry Value: Weiss, Juliana, Schreiner and How to Tell Good Stones

Rhinestone jewelry is the part of an old jewelry box families write off first, because it was never meant to be precious. That instinct is mostly right and occasionally expensive: the tray of twenty dollar brooches can hold a Schreiner or a Juliana bracelet a collector will pay real money for, and the two look alike from across the room. This guide explains what a rhinestone is, which makers the market pays for, and how to recognize their work without a signature.

What is a rhinestone, and why does the foil matter?

A rhinestone is faceted glass with a mirror on the back. The name comes from quartz pebbles once found along the Rhine, worn as gems until the supply ran out and glassmakers imitated them. In the eighteenth century jewelers learned to coat the back of the glass with a thin metallic foil, and that mirror is what makes the stone sparkle. In 1892 Daniel Swarovski patented an electric machine that cut glass stones more precisely than any hand could, and the factory he founded at Wattens, Austria, in 1895 supplied the stones American costume makers advertised as Austrian crystal.

The foil is also the weak point. Water, jewelry dips, ultrasonic cleaners and damp storage get behind the stone and corrode the mirror, and the stone goes gray or dead. A dead stone cannot be revived, and cannot be replaced without the replacement showing, which is why a buyer turns a rhinestone piece to the light before anything else. The costume jewelry value guide makes the same point about every foil-backed piece; here it is the whole ballgame.

Is old rhinestone jewelry worth anything?

Yes, in tiers, and the honest baseline is low. Unsigned mid-century rhinestone pieces, and the mass-market names that made them by the million, bring $5 to $50 each and usually sell in lots. Signed work by the makers below, mostly made between the 1940s and the early 1970s, commonly brings $40 to a few hundred dollars a piece, as of September 2026 and set deliberately at the middle of the market. Above that sit a few records, the best a Schreiner brooch at $3,250, and a record is a ceiling, never an expectation. We would rather quote the modest number and beat it at the table.

How can I tell good rhinestones from cheap ones?

Turn the piece over. The back tells you more than the front.

• Prongs, not glue. Better makers set each stone in a metal cup with small prongs bent over its edge; cheaper work glued stones into a flat pan. Run a fingernail across a stone: prongs feel like tiny teeth at the rim, a glued stone sits in a smooth well. This is the single most useful tell.
• Open backs. Higher-grade pieces often leave the back of a large stone open so light passes through, and some set the stone unfoiled on purpose. Open settings cost more and were rarely used on bargain jewelry.
• Weight, finish and matching. A good piece feels dense for its size, the plating is even, and ten stones in a row match exactly in size, cut and color. Replaced stones, and cheap originals, sit a shade off.
• A mark. Signed pieces carry the name on a small plaque, the clasp, the pin stem or an earring clip, often worn thin. The makers marks guide shows where each house put its name.

What does aurora borealis mean on rhinestone jewelry?

Aurora borealis, AB to collectors, is an iridescent rainbow coating on the surface of the stone, developed by Swarovski with Christian Dior and introduced in 1956, applied as a microscopically thin layer of metal in a vacuum chamber. Two things follow. AB stones are a dating floor: a piece thick with them was made in 1956 or later, whatever the family story says. And from 1957 nearly every maker used AB, so the coating on its own says nothing about value. The construction under the stones does.

Which rhinestone makers do collectors pay for?

These are the names we check for first when a rhinestone tray comes into the Laguna Hills warehouse or onto a kitchen table in Orange County. Trifari, Eisenberg, Coro and Miriam Haskell have guides of their own and are left out here.

Weiss

Albert Weiss learned the trade at Coro in the 1930s and opened his own company in New York in 1942; he retired in 1969 and the firm closed in 1971, so every Weiss piece is at least half a century old. The pieces collectors pay for are the black japanned settings with dark stones, the figural butterflies and insects, and the rhinestone Christmas tree pins of the 1950s and 60s. Most Weiss brings $20 to $100 a piece; clean japanned figurals sit at the top of that band or a little above it, and worn pieces at general auction sit at the bottom.

Juliana, and how to spot it without a mark

Juliana is the collectors’ name for the rhinestone jewelry of DeLizza and Elster, a New York manufacturer founded in 1947 that made jewelry for other companies to sell under their own names. Paper hang tags reading Juliana went on some pieces for about a year beginning in 1967, the tags went in the bin when the jewelry was first worn, and so nearly every piece is unsigned. Collectors identify it from the back: bracelets built as five stone-set links joined by textured bands, figure-eight puddles of solder where stone cups were joined before plating, a few heavy rivets holding layered florets, open-back navette stones, and dangling glass beads. The large stones are prong-set even where small accent stones were glued. Prices have settled since the collecting fever of the 2000s; for a single bracelet, $40 to $150 is the honest expectation.

Schreiner

Schreiner is the most valuable name on this page and the easiest to miss, because much of it was made unsigned for dress designers. Henry Schreiner was a Bavarian blacksmith who came to New York in 1923; published accounts date the founding of his jewelry business anywhere from 1932 to 1951, and we will not pick one. He died in 1954, his daughter Terry and her husband Ambros Albert ran the company through its best years, and production ended by the mid-1970s. The signature is the setting: Schreiner turned rhinestones point up, often unfoiled, so the facets catch light from the front and the fabric shows through from behind, and built pieces in layers joined by hooks and eyes rather than solder. The keystone-shaped ruffle brooch, introduced in 1957, is the design collectors chase. Dealer asks on retail sites run into the thousands, and an ask is what a seller hopes for; the results table below holds the numbers we can stand behind.

What ruins the value of rhinestone jewelry?

• Dead or gray foil. The mirror behind the stone has corroded. It cannot be reversed, and a piece with several dead stones is priced as a parts piece however good the maker.
• Missing stones. One missing stone on a large piece is a normal deduction. Several, or a missing center stone, take most of the value with them.
• Verdigris. The green crust that grows on base metal in damp storage. It spreads, and it usually means the foil behind the nearby stones is gone too.
• Replaced stones. A modern stone in an old setting is visible at a glance: the cut, size and color are all a shade off. It reads as damage on top of damage.
• Cleaning. Water, dips and ultrasonic cleaners kill foil. Metal polish strips plating. A dry soft brush is the only safe tool, and doing nothing is safer still.

Why does re-gluing a loose stone hurt?

Because it turns a small honest fault into a permanent visible one. A loose prong-set stone can be reseated by pressing the prongs back; household glue wicks under the stone, clouds the foil from behind, yellows as it ages, and shows as a halo in daylight. A buyer who sees glue on one stone has to assume the others were handled the same way, and prices the whole piece down. Leave a loose stone loose, put it in a small bag with the piece, and let the buyer see exactly what they are getting.

What has rhinestone jewelry actually sold for?

Realized results and auction estimates are the numbers worth carrying into a sale. Guide figures are an author’s estimates, and dealer prices are asks.

The one four-figure result is a documented, book-illustrated Schreiner. Everything else, including good signed work, lands between forty dollars and a few hundred.

How we buy rhinestone jewelry

We buy costume jewelry outright, rhinestone pieces very much included, and we read every piece from the back before we price it. Signed and construction-identified pieces are priced individually, in front of you, with the maker explained as we go; the modest remainder gets one honest lot offer; and everything is paid in cash the same visit. Across Southern California that is a free house call or an appointment at our Laguna Hills warehouse. Outside California we buy costume jewelry 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. For the makers this page leaves out, see the Trifari guide, the Miriam Haskell guide, the Eisenberg guide and the Coro guide.