10 Old Costume Bracelets That Look Worthless But Are Secretly Worth Thousands

That chunky bracelet rattling around in the bottom of your jewelry box, the one you have always assumed was cheap because it looks like something from a dime store display, might be sitting right next to a piece that is worth thousands of dollars, and most people would never be able to tell the two apart just by looking. In this video I walk through ten old costume bracelets that turn up constantly in ordinary jewelry boxes, dismissed on sight as cheap and dated, when a specific designer's signature, a particular construction method, or a certain metal underneath the finish can turn what looks like dollar store jewelry into a piece serious collectors are actively bidding on. 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, and costume bracelets are one of the categories where the word costume does the most damage, because families hear it and assume worthless, when costume simply means the stones are not real, it says nothing at all about what the piece itself is worth. I will be honest with you from the start, most costume bracelets are exactly what they look like, cheap metal worth almost nothing, and I am not going to inflate that for you. But certain makers built genuine artistry into costume pieces, and those specific bracelets are worth real money precisely because the workmanship, not the stones, is what collectors are paying for. For every bracelet on this list, I will show you what to look for on the clasp, the mark, and the construction itself, so you know within a minute whether what you are holding is ordinary or something genuinely valuable. Do not sell anything as scrap, do not assume costume means worthless, 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 bracelet at number one is the one people mistake for junk more than any other piece I have ever priced.