Is it Real or Is It FAKE??

To today's costume jewelry dealers and collectors, this is a very important question. Deliberate reproductions (I prefer to call them "fakes") of important, high-end, EXPENSIVE costume jewelry pieces are showing up everywhere these days. From Brimfield to your local flea market to the antique mall down the street; from eBay to dealer web pages, deliberately faked pieces being passed off as REAL. Collectors get cheated out of their hard-earned money; dealers who unsuspectingly sell "fakes" can suffer great damage to their reputations.

In the interest of educating vintage jewelry collectors and dealers alike, I have accumulated a bit of information on the fakes that are out there, and am presenting this knowledge here, so that everyone can make better-informed decisions about vintage jewelry purchases. I also hope that, through my efforts and the efforts of other like-minded collectors and dealers, we can make it just a bit harder for the "repro artists" to ply their trade. 

I will be adding to this collection as time goes on. Please feel free to print out these pages and take them with you when you shop! It may save you a ton of moola. And, contact me at dkos@radix.net if you suspect a fake that you'd like me to know about. NEW! I have now linked to the "Fakes Gallery" at costumejewels.about.com -- be sure to check this page often, as I'm reproducing thumbnail pics from that gallery, with links to each message that has been posted. My thanks to Guide Isabelle Bryman for coming up with this unique way to spread information about "fake" vintage jewelry.

Please bear several things in mind, as you shop:

• The most important rule of all: if it looks too good, and the price is too good, it probably IS too good . . . to be true.
  
  
• There may be more than one "fake" of any given piece. So, observe carefully, even if the piece you want to buy doesn't look like the "fake" I've presented. Be wary if it doesn't look like the "real" piece, either.
  
  
• There are unsigned pieces out there that may look a lot like important signed "high end" pieces. Likely, they were made at the time the real piece was popular, and were "knockoffs" made by competing manufacturers trying to capitalize on the popularity of the signed pieces. These are not "fakes" -- however, they're not necessarily an unsigned version of an authentic piece, either, so don't pay a "real" price for them.
  
  
• Be wary of claims that a piece is an "unsigned this-or-that." Yes, it could be -- perhaps it was made by a "jobber," both for a "name" company and for its own distribution as an unsigned piece. But, how does the dealer know? Provenance can be hard to prove. Ask questions. Read, study, and learn all you can. I have found, in my travels to antique malls and shops across the country, that very few costume jewelry dealers (excepting the ones I know, of course!) are really as knowledgeable as they should be. Also, some dealers are knowingly selling fakes . . . greed and a wish to boost the bottom line can lead some dealers to turn a blind eye to ethics. Be tight-fisted with your money, and don't buy unless you feel comfortable and have done your homework.
  
  
• Be wary of familiar-looking pieces that sport another designer's name. For example, neither Boucher nor Hobe made jelly bellies . . . period. Any JB with either signature is not genuine.