Antique Jewellery Is Special Because Every Piece Is Unique

There is something very special about antique jewellery and that is that for all intents and purposes every piece is unique. The same thing applies to many things which are antique because they were created in the days before mass production. 

A piece of antique jewellery is a one-off and you can be certain that nobody has a piece exactly the same as the one that you buy, whereas if you buy a piece of jewellery from one of the big jeweller's chains - while it might look excellent - you know that there is another one exactly the same in their other stores because they have been mass-produced.

This brings us to another point and that is that if you are looking for antique jewellery there is no point in going to a chain store because they don't have any. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Some of the chains have 200 or 300 branches, and they are not about to let their individual managers start buying pieces of jewellery from people who walk in off the street with them wishing to sell them. All hell would break loose!

The managers could pay wildly over the odds, or then again, they could pay wildly under the odds. Either way, the chains would be in trouble. Even if a manager bought something for far less than it is actually worth, the resultant publicity would do no end of harm. So the chain stores only sell what has been purchased by their central buying departments.

If you want to buy unique pieces of jewellery then you have to go to the independent jewellery shops, or the ones with perhaps two or three branches, where the business owner can make any decisions he wishes to make, or where a trusted assistant of many years' standing may sometimes be allowed to make purchases.

Of course, the majority of antique jewellery purchases are made for gifts, and there is something very special about knowing that you have just received a piece of jewellery that is unique. Nobody else has one the same. It is yours, and yours alone.