15 Fake-Looking Jewelry Pieces That Are Secretly Worth A Fortune (You Might Own One).

Before you decide that the ugliest, cheapest looking thing in your mother's jewelry box is worthless, I want you to sit with me because I am about to argue that your own eyes are the worst tool you own for pricing old jewelry. Here's the trouble. We look at it and we ask one quiet question. Does this look expensive? And with old jewelry, that instinct is almost exactly backwards. The pieces that get thrown in the donation bag are the ones that look wrong. The frosted one that looks like plastic. The gray one that looks like little chips of gravel. The clasp that looks broken. The dull white ring that just looks like tired old silver. And here is the part nobody in my line of work ever has a reason to say out loud. You cannot pay and turn it over and read the back. Nobody can package that knowledge in a pretty box and sell it to you fresh every Christmas. So this handful of simple, honest tells, it just never quite reaches the woman cleaning out a drawer on a Sunday afternoon. So today, 15 fake looking pieces that can be secretly worth a small fortune. And I will be honest the whole way down. I will tell you when something is real money and when it is worth $10 and a nice memory. Because false hope helps nobody. Let's begin. Number 15. The old gold field locket that looks like cheap brass. Almost every family has one. A heavy little locket, a watch chain your grandfather called his Albert, a bear pin gone dark and dull at the back of the drawer. And because the color has faded to a tired brassy brown, everyone assumes it is costume junk. But there is a word of difference between gold plate and gold field. And the drawer does not tell you which is which. Gold plate is a whisper of gold that wears off in a season. Gold field is different. It is a real, thick layer of actual gold bonded over a base metal core. 5% gold or more by weight. Here is your tell. And it costs you nothing. Take a loop to the back and look for the tiny stamps. Letters like GF or a GP or a little fraction like 1 20th 12 carat gold field. Go to field, which tells you exactly how much gold is bonded on. And every so often, a piece you assumed was filled turns out to be solid. Stamp 10 carat or 14 or the European marks. Three pectum fee numpty numpty. So before anything leaves the house, read the back. A good Victorian gold field locket brings tens of dollars, sometimes over 100. And the solid gone surprise underneath brings a great deal more. Number 14. Georgian paste, the glass that outshines diamonds. Now, most of us were taught a rhinestone is a cheap, silly thing. But 200 years ago, before bright electric light, the finest jillers made something called paste. And it was not a fake pretending to be a diamond. Paste is a highly glass gut by hand and set into closed back silver with a tiny sheet of metal foil behind each stone to throw the candlelight straight back at you. A gentleman named George's Frederick Strauss made it so fashionable in Paris that to this day, in much of Europe, a rhinestone is simply called a stress. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London keeps Georgian paste behind glass. So here is how you know you may have the real old thing, turn it over. If the back of every stone is completely closed in silver, with no open hole behind it, and the piece has real age and a little honest wear, you are likely holding true antique paste. And one warning that will save you real money. Never, ever soak old paste in water or drop it in a cleaning machine. Water creeps behind the foil and rinse it forever. Good Georgian paste can bring several hundred dollars and the finest sets climb into the thousands. Please do not treat that like a $2 sparkle. Number 13, the frosted glass necklace that looks like a bar of soap. You have seen these, a necklace of cloudy, milky, frosted stone set into lacy silver colored metal, often with one little bright stone winking in the center. But in the 1920s and 30s, that was camphor glass. Real glass, moaned it and given a soft frosted finish, set into delicate filigree. Many of those filigree frames are actual sterling silver, and that little cinder stone is sometimes a genuine small diamond or a marquessette. Your tail is simple and physical. Real frosted glass is cool and surprisingly heavy in the hand, and it stays cool. A camphor glass piece is not going to buy you a car, I will be honest. But a good one in sterling, with real stones, quietly carries tens to low hundreds of dollars. Number 12, the old plastic that everyone swears is a fortune. Now, I have to be the honest friend here, because you have all seen the videos that promise every scrap of old plastic in your house is secretly worth thousands. There were three great old plastics. Celluloid came first in the 1920s, light and thin end. I must warn you, genuinely flammable, so never test it with heat or flame. Then lucite, from the 30s, the clear one folks call apple juice when it goes golden. And bakelite, the dens, carved one collector's truly dachets. But the honest truth is that most old plastic jewelry is worth 10 to 40 dollars, and the market is now flooded with modern fakes the dealers nicknamed fake light. So here is a safe tell you can do at your kitchen table, no flame required. Rub a hidden spot hard with your thumb until the friction warms it, then smell it. True bakelite gives off a sharp, chemical, carbolic odor. Celluloid smells faintly of camphor. And if you dab a hidden spot with a little metal polish on a cotton swap, and it comes back stand yellow, that points to bakelite. It is the deeply carved, rare color bakelite that clams into real money. The plain bangle, honestly, is a bangle. Number 11. The little gray stones that look like cheap gravel. Here is a piece that fools almost everyone. A brooch studded with dozens of tiny, dark, grayish stones with a metallic shimmer. To the casual eye it looks like dull, dirty costume sparkle. But those little gray stones may be marcusite. Real marcusite is faceted iron pyrite. Each stone hand set into its own little cup of sterling silver, and the very best of it came from Forgium in Germany. There was a maker there named Theodor Farner, and his art deco pieces are treasured by collectors the word over. So turn it over and hunt for the tail. Farner marked his work with the letters T F inside a small circle, right beside the silver mark. Nine three mive, or later, nine two mive. And look closely at the little stones themselves. Each real marcusite sits in its own tiny setting, not smeared under a blob of glue like cheap paste. Unzined sterling marcusite is a modest, pretty thing. But a signed Theodor Farner brooch can brooch can bring low hundreds, and the finest reach past a thousand dollars. All in something the whole family walk past, because gray does not shout. Number 10. The cheap-looking beets that carry a heartbreaking history. Picture a necklace of molded glass beets, strung on decorative brass filigree. It looks, at a glance, like carnival costume jewelry. It is anything but. After the discovery of King Tutankhamen's tom in 1922, the whole world went wild for anything Egyptian. And in a Czech glass-making town called Gablenz, two brothers, Max and Norbert Neger, made some of the most beautiful Egyptian revival glass jewelry ever produced. Here is the crucial part for you. They almost never signed their work. So you cannot hunt for a name. You have to know the look, the quality of that molded Czech glass, and that fine filigree. And their story is one you should carry with you. The Neiger brothers were Jewish. When the Nazis advanced, they fled their factory. And in 1942, both brothers were murdered at Auschwitz. The jewelry is very nearly all that is left of them. A genuine Neiger necklace has quietly climbed into the low hundreds, and the rare pieces pass a thousand dollars. So if you have inherited strange, exotic old glass beets on brass, look again with a little reverence. Number 9. The little compact that looks like painted tin. So many women carried one. A powder compact, a locket, a small pendant, covered in a smooth panel of colored enamel with a soft, rippling, watery shimmer beneath the surface. But that shimmer is the sign of real fired enamel over engine-turned metal, a technique the old jewelers called guilloche. The metal underneath is cut with a fine repeating pattern. Then translucent glass enamel is fired over the top, so light dances through it and bounces off the engraving below. The great house of Faberge built its legend on this technique, and fine Swiss and French makers used it on the best compacts and lockets. Here is how you tell real fired enamel from cheap paint. Real enamel is glass. It is cool to the touch, glossy and hard, and when it fails, it chips like glass in little conchoidal flakes rather than peeling like paint. Look underneath for a silver mark. A modest guilloche compact runs from tens into the low hundreds, and a fine-signed piece climbs far beyond that. Now, before the top E, where the numbers get serious, one small favor. If this is helping you see that jewelry box in a new light, take a second and tap subscribe. This is American Tool Legends, and every week we find the hidden worth in the ordinary things your family left behind. And one honest reminder, nothing I say here is a formal appraisal. When a piece looks promising, the next stop is a certified appraiser, not the common section. Alright, back to it. Number 8. The rhinestone cleep that is rhinestone cleep that is brighter than it has any right to be. Fur clips and dress clips turn up in every old jewelry box, and most of them truly are ordinary custom sparkle. But every so often, you pick one up and the stones just blaze. That extra fire is often the mark of Eisenberg. The firm used unusually large, high-quality Austrian crystals, the same class of stone found in far more expensive jewelry, and their early clips were built in real sterling silver. So flip the clip over and read the back. The words you want are Eisenberg Original, sometimes just a capital E, often beside a sterling mark. And trust your eye on the stones. If they are noticeably larger and brighter than the everyday rhinestone, pay attention. Side Eisenberg Original clips regularly bring low hundreds of dollars, and the rare Figaro designs climb higher still. Number 7. The brooch that looks broken but never was. This one breaks my heart, because I have watched good money thrown away over a simple misunderstanding. You find an old brooch, and the back seems wrong. The two hoves slide apart, or there is a wobbly frame. Everyone assumes it is damaged. But that is very often a convertible piece, and that mechanism is the clever, valuable part. Designers built brooches where two dress clips lock into a single frame, so a woman could wear one grand brooch to the evening affair, then split it into a matching pair of clips for daytime. It was meant to come apart. So test it gently. See if the hoves seat cleanly into the frame and the clips snap firm. And here I will be honest, because this is where those other videos oversell. Most convertible pieces are But when one is built in platinum and set with real diamonds, it climbs into the thousands. The lesson is not to assume the ceiling. It is to stop assuming it is broken, and have it looked at. Number 6. The glass button with a tiny world painted inside it. Now we reach one of the most enchanting things you can find. It looks like a dumbed glass cabochon, or a fancy button, with a little picture in it. A dog. A horse. But tilt it in the light, and if the picture seems to float in three dimensions, you may have a reverse-carved crystal intaglio. These were made by carving a scene into the flat back of a dome of clear rock crystal, then painting it by hand from behind, so it appears suspended inside the stone. The technique came out of Belgium, from an artist named Pradier, around 1860, and was perfected in England by a carver named Thomas Cook. Now here is a lovely little truth, and it is the opposite of the sloppy mistakes you hear in other videos. These are often called Essex crystals, but that name is a plain error. It comes from an enamel painter named William Essex, who had absolutely nothing to do with making them. The name simply stuck by mistake, and the trade has repeated it ever since. Your tell is death. A real reverse-carved crystal has genuine three-dimensional relief when you tilt it. A cheap fake is just a flat printed picture trapped under glass. Five Victorian examples bring hundreds to a few thousand dollars. A charming little painted lily locket reportedly sold for over two thousand at auction. Number nub five. The big glass ring that everyone calls costume. Here is where I have to protect you from a very common piece of bad advice. You have an old cocktail ring with a large colored cinder stone, a deep blue or red, in a fancy metal mound. And somewhere along the way, a video told you that if it looks like glass, it is secretly a huge natural sapphire worth six thousand dollars. Let me give you the honest version. Back in 1905, a French chemist named Auguste Vernieu invented a way to grow real rubies and sapphires in a furnace. And it worked so well that within a few years, factories were making synthetic sapphires and rubies by the ton. So by the 1920s and 30s, a great many of those big Art Deco ring centers were lap-grown corundum. Real corundum, chemically identical to the mind stone, but made by man. That does not mean your ring is worthless. A period piece in real platinum or gowned, with genuine diamonds around a synthetic center, still has value. But only a gemologist with the right tools can tell a natural sapphire from a synthetic one. Your eye simply cannot. And let me correct one thing those other videos get wrong, get wrong. They will call a stone 16 carat. A jam's weight is measured in carats. With a say, carat with a K is only ever about the purity of gowned. Mixing those up is a debt giveaway someone is guessing. And here is the invisible truth. A furnace makes synthetic sapphire by the truckload. So nobody in the trade profits from teaching you the difference. Which is exactly why you hatch your hopes and get colored stones tested before you dream. Number four. The dull white ring that just looks like old silver. Feel for this one. A plain white metal ring or brooch. No bright shine, maybe a little gray. Easy to dismiss as tired sterling. But pick it up. Does it feel oddly, surprisingly heavy for its size? Because that could be platinum. It is dense and heavy and quietly luminous. And it does not blacken like silver. Look for the marks, stamped small. Platt or P.T. or the numbers nine numpty or nine huntant or the old mark. I writ Platt. And here is the honest history the other videos fumble. Platinum did not just vanish because it was melted. In 1942, the United States War Production Board declared it a strategic war metal and banned it from civilian jewelry entirely. That is why jewelers turned to white gowned, popularized by a New York jeweler named Bilets around 1917 and to palladium. So a real platinum piece most often dates from before or around the war, which is part of why it is scarce. A platinum and diamond piece routinely runs into the thousands. But verify that mark and have it weighed and tested. Do not spend the money in your head before the stamp confirms it. Number three. The brooch that looks like a painted souvenir. Picture a little oval brooch with a spray of flowers on a black background. So smooth and precise it looks painted on like a pretty trinket from an old trip abroad. But run your fingertip across it. If it is perfectly smooth stone, cool to the touch, and you can see the natural grain and veining in the colors, you may be holding Pietradura. That is Florentine hearthstone mosaic, where craftsmen cut tiny sleevers of real lapis, malachite, and jasper and fit them so tightly the seams nearly disappear. It is a Medici tradition. Still honored in Florence at a workshop called the Opificio della Pietradur. And here is a distinction people mix up constantly. Pietradura is fitted pieces of solid stone. Micromosaic is a different art built from hundreds of tiny glass tiles. Under a loop, real stone shows smooth veining, while cheap printed fake shows a dotted pattern. A good Victorian Pietradura brooch brings low hundreds into the low housings. Number Howe. The dented silver that looks unfinished. This one truly does look like a mistake. A piece of silver jewelry with a hammered, uneven, almost primitive surface. A matte finish instead of a high polish. But that hand hammered look was the whole point. It is the arts and craft style, a proud rebellion against soulless machine made shine. The most collectible of all came from Liberty of London, a line called Simric. Much of it designed by a brilliant manseman named Archibald Knox, full of flowing Celtic knotwork and rich enamel. So look for the tell. English hallmarks and the word Simric, or all in co, stamped small. And feel that planished, hand hammered surface. Side Liberty and Knox pieces bring hundreds and the finest climb into the thousands. The den you were about to apologize for is the signature of the art. And now, number one. The magic signature that might be a lie. Here is where every other video tells you the same fairy tale. Fie the tiny word Cartier, or Van Cleef, or Tiffany, hidden on a clasp, and you are suddenly rich. And I have to be the honest friend one last time, because that story sends good people down a painful road. The truth is this. A fake signature is one of the oldest tricks in the trade. Anyone can scratch a famous name into the back of an ordinary piece. Saw the great auction houses never trust the name alone. They authenticate the whole object. The correct maker's mark, yes, but also the assay hallmarks, the serial or inventory numbers, the exact construction, and the maker's own private archives. Because a house like Cartier keeps records reaching back a century. And a genuine signed Art Deco piece from one of those houses can indeed reach well into six figures at Christie's or Sotheby's. That is real. But it is precisely because the ceiling is so high that the marks get faked so often. That the marks get faked so often. So if you find a famous name scratched on the back The real fortune was never a magic word stamped in the metal. It was learning to read the whole honest object. So now I want to hear from you and be specific for me. Out of all 15, which one is sitting in your house right now? Is it the frosted glass that looks like plastic? The gray little stones you called gravel? The clasp you were sure was broken? The dull white ring you thought was just old silver? And I will leave you with one slightly unpopular opinion. The plain, homely looking pieces are very often the smarter bet than the big flashy ones. Flash is cheap to fake. Restrain and real craft are expensive to make. And nearly impossible to counterfeit. The trait loves to point your eye at the sparkle. Because the sparkle is where the easy sells live. But whatever you find, promise me one thing before you buy, sell, or insure a single piece. Check with a certified appraiser. And check your own state and local regulations too. Because some older materials carry rules worth knowing about. That one careful afternoon can change everything. This is American Tool Legends. Thank you for spending your time with me today. Take good care of yourself. And take good care of those treasures. I will see you in the next one.