Blog: buying jewellery online – insider guide

1. Ask questions. A good seller will reply promptly and articulately. Bad English = bad jewellery!

2. Only buy from sellers with with a no quibble returns policy.

3. If you're in any doubt use a free authentication service such as ours. We can certainly tell you if we see something suspicious.

4. Pay with Paypal or a Credit Card so you're protected in case anything goes wrong.

5. Compare identical articles with another seller. Do the signatures and hallmarks match? Remember it is better to do this with more than one other seller as you could accidentally find yourself comparing your item against a fake!

There's always going to be value in buying preloved/second hand fine jewellery but some eras yield more value than others. Why? It's down commodity prices (that means gold, platinum and diamonds to you and I). 

Around the time of the millennium from around 1995 until 2003 gold and other commodities were at an all time low. That meant that jewellers could use more of it. When gold/platinum prices are high they use less. That means that items made around the low gold/platinum price era tend to be heavier and therefore better value for money than later items. In fact Tiffany & Co discontinued many of their heavier items towards the end of the noughties as they became too expensive to produce.