18 Old Brooches & Earrings From Your Grandmother's Era That Are Secretly Worth A Fortune

Pick up the brooch your grandmother pinned to her coat every Sunday, or the clip-on earrings she wore to church for forty years, and ask yourself when anyone last turned them over and read the back. Brooches and clip-on earrings are the two kinds of jewelry families dismiss fastest, because the styles feel old-fashioned and nobody wears them anymore, and that is exactly why signed, well-made pieces end up in donation bags for a dollar each. In this video I walk through eighteen old brooches and earrings from your grandmother's era that collectors are paying real money for today, and for every one I show you how to tell whether yours is the genuine article. I am Roy Danforth, and for thirty-eight years I have been buying and pricing estate sales, flea markets and antique mall booths across the Ohio Valley and the Midwest. In that time I have watched more real money walk out the door in a brooch box than almost anywhere else in the house. I will be honest with you from the start, most brooches and clip-on earrings are exactly what they look like, inexpensive costume pieces worth a few dollars, and I am not going to inflate that for you. But a signed piece from the right maker, a genuine stone, or a particular construction method can put one of them in a completely different category, and the check that tells you which one you are holding takes about a minute once you know where to look. For every piece on this list, I will show you the signature, where it hides, how the pin and the clip should be built, how the stones and the finish should look, and the details that separate a genuine period piece from a later copy carrying a borrowed name. Do not sell anything by weight, do not scrub the back of a piece with anything abrasive, do not let anyone take the whole box for one flat price, until you have gone through this whole list. If you find this useful, consider subscribing, because I go through a new jewelry box every week. And stay to the end, because the piece at number one is the one I most often see dropped into a bag without a second look, and the check that catches it takes ten seconds.