Glamour and Earth Artisan Jewelry

Buying Handmade Jewelry: How do you know you’re paying the right price?

04 Jan 2010 Leave a Comment

by greengeekgirl in Buyer Tips Tags: artisan, buying, cost, handmade, how, jewelry, price, prices, pricing, tips, to

When shopping in the retail world, you can expect the market to set a reasonable price for the goods that you buy (most of the time–we’ll forget about the oil crisis we were having a couple of years ago). When buying handmade goods from smaller sellers, pricing can become a much murkier gray area; individual designers set price points based on different formulas, and sometimes, based on no particular formula at all. One designer may pay him- or herself a higher hourly wage than another; another designer may have a higher markup because he or she sells fewer pieces. Some designers are not as good at pricing as others; some undersell their jewelry, and some oversell. How do you know if you’re paying the right price for handmade jewelry? There are a few factors we can look at to determine if an individual seller is pricing within a reasonable price range.

Design and Craftsmanship
Two of the first things that I like to look at in terms of pricing are design and craftsmanship. Is a design unique or a showpiece? Many handmade items are one of a kind without being totally unique; it may be possible to find many similar designs in different colors and with slight variations. A truly original design is worth more because of rarity; if it’s not comparable to anything else that is being made or that is for sale, you can expect rightfully to pay a little (or a lot) more for it. An elaborate showpiece that is toiled over for hundreds of hours also can be very expensive when the (wo)man-hours are added up.

Good and potentially difficult craftsmanship can rightfully add dollars to the price tag of a nice piece of jewelry. Anybody who makes jewelry can learn the basics in a matter of days; wire wrapping, simple stringing, and even some basic chainmaille is easy to make and easy to come by. Those who do more difficult crafting, such as metalsmithing, lampworking, or more advanced chainmaille, have spent many more hours refining their crafts. If these pieces are more expensive, it is a nod to the time that the artisans spent learning to create them. (And, potentially, to help defray the costs of tools needed to do it.)

Material Quality
Another thing that is to be considered concurrently with design and craftsmanship is the quality of the materials used in the piece. It stands to reason that more expensive materials means a more expensive product; as a lay person, how do you determine if materials are ‘expensive’ or not?

Many pieces of jewelry are crafted with beads of some sort. Beads fall into a few basic categories: metal, lampwork (hand-made), glass (not lampwork but machine-made), gemstones, and “other” (bone, wood, resin, etc). Metal beads and components will be more or less expensive depending on the material of which they are made, the size, and the quality (if you can see seams, if it’s a nicely done focal rather than just a machine-made spacer, etc). Larger beads use more material, so expect them to be more expensive if they are made out of a precious metal. Pro tip: if you see words like “plated” or “sterling silver finish,” that shiny silver color is actually a base metal, probably nickel or brass, and it shouldn’t be as expensive as sterling silver.

Lampwork beads, or hand-blown glass beads, may be more or less expensive depending on the design, the designer, the difficulty in making them, or the materials used to make them. A deceptively simple pair of earrings using lampwork beads may be more expensive than you think that they should be for glass earrings, but if the beads are handmade, they will be more expensive than machine-made beads. If you’re not sure if the piece you love is comprised of lampwork glass, don’t be afraid to ask the designer any questions you have.

Other glass beads, such as Swarovski brand crystals, can come in many different shapes, colors, sizes, and designs. These beads are usually fairly inexpensive, unless they are vintage or specially made. This is just a personal preference for me, but if you’re buying any sort of crystal jewelry, look for jewelry using Swarovski brand crystals. I’ve never seen the cut and color of Swarovski matched by another company. Swarovskis are fairly inexpensive for the glitz factor that they give.

Gemstone beads are extremely common and probably the most difficult to navigate if you’re a jewelry novice. There are, of course, precious and semi-precious gems; precious gems, as a rule, include diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. Some gems that are considered “semi-precious” are extremely rare, though, and can fetch high prices; so can large semi-precious gems with great clarity and cut. Here are a few things to look for when buying gemstone jewelry:

• The type of stone used. The rarity of the stone is the first thing that will set the price point; tiny, tiny three millimeter rubies are more expensive than larger, more common stones. If you’re unsure about whether or not a stone is rare, put your detective skills to work and do a few searches before purchasing. If you can’t do this because you’re in a store or at a fair, ask the seller a lot of questions. (If there are other jewelry sellers on-site and the piece is worth a lot, it might benefit you to pop by and ask them, as well!)
• Clarity, or how clear the stone is. Is it sort of murky, or does it have lots of inclusions (imperfections in the stone)? Clear stones with few inclusions are rarer, as it takes the right conditions to create clear, beautiful gemstones.
• The cut of the stone. Are the stones beautifully and uniformly cut, or are they kind of wonky and all over the place? Better cuts take time and skill, and time is money.
• Size. A whopper of a semi-precious gem is still a gemstone, and larger gemstones are rarer than smaller ones.
• Color. This one may or may not be immediately obvious to the casual buyer and it may not factor into your decision AS much. If, however, you are looking at a piece and you’re wondering why this particular material is outrageously expensive, color may come into it. Some stones, such as garnet, come in a variety of colors other than the standard ones that we know; some colors are rarer than others, and that makes them more expensive.

Pearls also range from inexpensive to expensive, and it takes an eye to see what is good and what isn’t. The best pearls are going to be more uniform in shape and size and have a nice color, texture, and luster; cheaper pearls may be oddly shapen, have surface imperfections like pocks or ripples, and may not be uniformly colored or have good luster.

Finally, as far as gemstones go, look out for imitation gemstones. “Cherry quartz,” “brown goldstone,” manmade opals, glass pearls–there are lots of false gems. If you’re not sure if a gem is real or fake, do your research and/or ask the seller.

Many pieces of jewelry also feature some sort of metal component, whether it’s just an earhook or a clasp. Here, gauge based on the amount of metal in the piece, the rarity of the metal (nickel, brass, copper, silver, gold, platinum), and the craftsmanship of the component. If the only sterling silver in the piece is in the earhook and a little bit of wire, it won’t add that much cost onto the piece. If, on the other hand, you’re looking at a bracelet with a stunning, large, handmade toggle clasp, you can expect to pay a bit more for that.

Some pieces are crafted entirely out of metal; again, the price will vary on the amount of metal used and the difficulty and quality of the work and craftsmanship.

Competition
If I’m not sure if I should be paying that amount of money for a hand-crafted piece, I tend to look at the competition. (This means other sellers that are selling handmade items, not retailers selling mass-produced jewelry.) How does the quality compare? How does the price compare? If you’re not satisfied that the seller is selling the item for the correct price, try asking the seller a few polite questions about how the item was made, the components in the item, et cetera.

I wouldn’t recommend haggling with an individual seller; it’s generally considered rude in the hand-crafted community to try to get a ‘bargain’ from an independent designer. If, however, you decide you would like to try that route (and I strongly advise against doing so), a polite way to try to make a deal would be to approach the seller with a very politely-worded message such as this: “I really love this piece that you’ve made. I have been looking at other items which are comparable; they don’t fit my taste as well, but unfortunately, they are within my budget and this one is not. I wanted to ask, is your price firm?” (Pro tip: “Is your price firm?” is a tip I got for bargaining from a magazine; I believe it was Julianne Moore who uses it to haggle without being rude. I was delighted when I read it, because asking for a discount off of the listed price is a very, very tricky thing to do.) If your seller is firm, but their work is truly overpriced for their market, keep watching their shop; they may not sell much and decide to lower the price or have a sale. Do not ask for a discount simply because you have sticker shock. Even if you would not pay that much for a piece of jewelry, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth that much on the market. Do your research first!

I hope this has been a little bit informative! Sorry for the lack of eye candy; maybe I’ll come back and put in some pictures that you can ogle while reading! ;)