Sell to Us · Costume Jewelry · San Fernando Valley
The Valley kept its jewelry boxes for sixty years.
The San Fernando Valley is the biggest original-owner neighborhood in California. Hundreds of thousands of ranch houses went up in two decades, bought by studio crews, aerospace families and everyone else a booming Los Angeles needed, and a remarkable number of them stayed with the same family ever since. When one of those houses finally turns over, the jewelry comes out of the same dresser it went into in 1958: cocktail brooches, rhinestone parures worn to a company party, the mother’s pieces that came west with the family, and a tangle of everything else underneath.
Free visit · cash offers · no obligation
We are California Vintage Buyers, at 23011 Moulton Pkwy, Suite G-11, Laguna Hills, CA 92653, and we run Valley days every week. The visit is free and the sorting is the service: a loupe on every clasp, hook and pin stem, suspected Bakelite tested properly, condition read out loud. Signed pieces get priced individually in front of you, the modest remainder is bought as an honest lot instead of being left for the family to wonder about, and you are paid cash before we leave. Call or text photos to (949) 449-1255.
What comes out of Valley dressers
Signed designer costume
Crown Trifari figurals, hand-wired Miriam Haskell, Eisenberg, Weiss, Boucher and Coro. The signature is often a few worn letters on a clasp.
Rhinestone parures and cocktail pieces
The matched sets of the 1940s through the 1960s, prong set with real weight, worn for evenings out and then put away for fifty years.
Bakelite and early plastics
Carved bangles, figural pins, dress clips and buckles. Tested at your table with hot water rather than a hot pin, which ruins the piece.
Industry households
The jewelry that came home from wardrobe and crew work across a career, still boxed with the paperwork it traveled with. Keep the paper with the pieces.
Boxes out of garages and storage units
The material that got packed when the house sold. We are glad to meet you where it actually sits rather than making you haul it home first.
Valley days, weekly, from Sherman Oaks to Granada Hills
We bundle Valley calls into dedicated days, which is what keeps a drive from Orange County practical for a single jewelry box. Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Encino, Tarzana and Woodland Hills on the south side, Van Nuys, Reseda, Northridge and Granada Hills across the floor, with Burbank and Glendale easily added to the same run. Most Valley calls get a visit within days, and if photos show something unusual we move faster than that. Evaluations are free and carry no obligation, family is welcome at the table or on the phone, and we look at the rest of the household on the same trip if you want a second opinion on it.
How We Work
We evaluate everything in front of you, explain what we’re seeing, and pay cash before we leave. No consignment, no waiting on a sale.
How it works
Call or text photos.
A real conversation about what you have, no pressure to sell.
We come to you.
We look at everything, at your pace. We know what we're seeing.
Cash offer, same visit.
A fair price on the spot, or a full estate sale run for you.
Common questions
How quickly can you get up to the Valley from Orange County?
Usually within a few days. We schedule Valley calls into dedicated days every week, so even a Northridge or Granada Hills address rarely waits long, and a promising box can pull a trip forward. Text photos of the pieces and the box to (949) 449-1255 and we will tell you the same day when we are next up there. There is no minimum: one tray is enough of a reason to stop.
The house sold and everything is in a storage unit in Van Nuys. Can you look at it there?
Yes, and we do it regularly. Meet us at the unit and we will work off the tailgate or a folding table, which is no different from working at a kitchen table. Bring the jewelry boxes out of the deeper stacks if you can, since unit lighting is poor and we would rather read marks in daylight at the door. If the unit is too tight to work in, the alternative is our Laguna Hills warehouse by appointment, and either way the evaluation is free.
The boxes sat in the garage through twenty Valley summers. Has the heat ruined everything?
Less than you would think, but it shows in specific ways. Heat softens old glue, so rhinestones work loose or fall out and pins get wobbly in their settings. Damp behind foil-backed stones grays them permanently, which is what the dark, dead-looking stones in the tray already are. Celluloid and early plastics can warp or craze, while Bakelite handles heat well and hates solvents instead. Do not re-glue anything, and put every loose stone you find into a small bag and keep it with the piece: a brooch with its original stone in an envelope is a different conversation from one that is simply missing it.
One brooch comes apart into two clips in the middle. Is it broken?
Almost certainly not. That is a Coro Duette, a brooch built on a patented frame so it splits into two separate dress clips that can be worn on a neckline, a hat or a lapel. The frame is the valuable part, so the two clips should stay with the carrier rather than being sorted into different piles, and a Duette whose mechanism still grips is worth more than one that has gone loose. Do not oil it or force the clips off, and bring all three parts together even if the pieces look unrelated in the box.
Some good-looking pieces have no signature at all. Could they still be Miriam Haskell?
They could, and this is where the most money gets thrown away. Haskell did not consistently mark her work before the late 1940s, so early pieces are identified by construction rather than a name: seed pearls and glass beads hand wired with fine wire onto pierced brass filigree, tiny rose montee crystals set into the backing, and a soft antiqued gilt finish. Turn the piece over and look at the back, which on real Haskell is as finished and as busy as the front. Do not restring anything and do not cut a loose wire, because the wiring is the evidence.
There are original boxes, hang tags and old receipts in the drawer. Keep them or throw them out?
Keep every one of them and put them back with the pieces they belong to. A signed maker’s box, an intact hang tag or a store receipt dates a piece, confirms the maker when the mark has worn away, and proves that a necklace and its earrings were bought as one set. That paperwork is worth real money on the right piece and nothing at all once it is separated from the jewelry, so do not sort the boxes into their own pile to save space. Bring the drawer as it is and let us read it as a set.
Know what it’s worth before you sell.
Our field guides explain how the market actually prices these things. No fishing, no hype: real ranges and the details that move them.
One call. We’ll take it
from there.
(949) 449-1255Mon-Sat 6 am-8 pm · Sun 8 am-5 pm
A real person answers seven days a week, weekends included. Photos sent today are usually answered the same day.
Prefer photos? Text them straight to the same number · or send them here
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