I insist on the best quality findings I can procure with a large focus on US made and finished product. Our brass stampings are made of rich, low brass (85% copper, 15% zinc) and I insist they be made of such. Not all are! I also use the best costume jewelry plater in the US business. Our standard finishes are high end, artisan made, and nickel free. Your success with our products is our success! That is why I am delighted to make the videos and do the research to help you reach your goals.

The things offered here in our virtual shop are things selected from my own journey, which as of this writing, is about 27 years long. Since many wonder, I'll be happy to tell you how I got started:

I began my business in my very late 20's. I did it with a twenty dollar bill and a baby boy on my hip. Together we traveled around to every auction, flea market, junk hole and antiques mall we could, buying up boxlots of glass and china, bags of old quilting fabric and stashes of paper ephemera. My education came from those boxlots, as I would look everything up the best I could in the old antiques and collectables books I had. Those were the days before you could get information with the click of a mouse. Sometimes the only way to learn was trial and error....and believe me, I made A LOT of errors.

I had a few inexpensive selling spaces and I paid my dues selling at both indoor and outdoor flea markets. Finally I realized that my best bet was to reach out to those outside my area via the pages of THE ANTIQUE TRADER WEEKLY. Advertising in the TRADER helped me to recognize trends and learn more about the business I was growing to love. I remember the first ad I wrote for the TRADER netted me 800.00 in sales. I knew I'd found my niche! I also knew it would take years of hard work to get the business viable enough to be able to quit my 'day job' being a cleaning lady. My cleaning business was successful, but it didn't feed my soul. I HAD to make it as an antiques dealer.

Since I realized my market was the world through the pages of the TRADER, I had to learn to be an ace shipper, and quick! It was becoming cumbersome shipping loads of depression glass to Texas. In our area at the time, there was quite a lot of old costume jewelry to be had, and as a rabid reader of the TRADER, I knew there was a good market for it. So I began to offer it to dealers, via an approval box.

An approval box? It worked this way: You would give me a call and tell me what you were looking for. You would then give me your credit info, and I'd send you a boxlot of maybe 4-500.00 worth of vintage jewelry to look at. You could buy one piece, all of it, or none of it. You'd stick a check in the box for what you kept or call me and tell me to process your credit card for the amount of what you kept. You'd be responsible for shipping to and from, as a courtesy to me....and you needed to be fast in turning the box around back to me, or you wouldn't get another one.

Believe it or not, I developed a really nice customer base, some of whom I know and visit with on the Internet TO THIS DAY. It worked fairly well, back then. I did have some theft, but I chalked it up to the cost of doing business....and thankfully, it was infrequent.

How Did I Begin Making Jewelry?

A bakelite customer from Florida who also promoted crafts shows sent me photos of things she and other folks were making, as well as a box of junk to play with. Somehow she felt I should be doing this, too. Another lady for whom I still did cleaning challenged me at nearly the same time to make her a brooch from old buttons. Why not?

Would you like to see the first piece of jewelry I ever made?