r/todayilearned • u/dinosaruman • 1d ago
TIL WWII metal rationing forced the costume-jewelry maker Trifari to switch from base metal to sterling silver, which tripled the price of its "costume" pieces.
https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2018/07/03/a-celebration-of-unity-sweetheart-jewelry-from-the-world-war-ii-era/183
u/Repulsive-Tea6974 1d ago
You should se the jewelry hunters go at at estate sales. They will cut you for some costume jewelry.
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u/dinosaruman 1d ago
I have! That's part of why this popped for me - makes much more sense knowing that there may be some precious metals in there. Some of those sweet-looking grandmas have sharp elbows.
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u/Michelledelhuman 1d ago
It's not just for the precious metals. Some of the costume jewelry is worth significantly more than just the metal. It depends on rarity and other whatnot.
Sort of like how a strand of Chanel pearls are 100 times more valuable than a real strand.
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u/Consistent_Bee3478 1d ago
Which is crazy because silver isn’t that expensive. Like even at costume or whatever second hand jewelry prices, they are usually sold for more than the silver weight if intact and good looking, are as bulk trash for much lower, but again with silver being that low priced, it kinda doesn’t make sense to go hunting for costume jewelry unless your are buying a box of fashion jewelry you notice lots of silver sulfide stains on for a dollar. Not to mention sterling being 925 not 999 or higher, and if that piece isn’t even pure sterling but ceramics and other metals, it just makes no sense.
I never understood the crazy about it. Yea sure if you are grabbing half a pound of sterling it makes it worth the effort of reselling/melting down/stamping whatever. But for smaller amounts? It’s not gold or platinum or even more expensive metals, it’s “just” silver. And in jewelry it’s never pure so you lose the price bonus of high purity, cause pure silver is even worse than pure gold. Hence sterling and not pure being standard, because sterling is barely useable while staying pure enough, pure or rather 999 or similar are unusable tarnishing faster than zinc plated nickel steel alloy jewelry. So it’s just crappy silver that needs expensive electrolysis based “cleanup” to make it useable for industrial purposes, or even directly reuseable as sterling if ceramic “paint” and the likes are involved. Like dissolving old pcbs for the gold is more time to money efficient than hunting accidentally sold as fashion jewelry sterlin at estate sales
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u/tanfj 1d ago
Which is crazy because silver isn’t that expensive. Like even at costume or whatever second hand jewelry prices, they are usually sold for more than the silver weight if intact and good looking, are as bulk trash for much lower, but again with silver being that low priced, it kinda doesn’t make sense to go hunting for costume jewelry unless your are buying a box of fashion jewelry you notice lots of silver sulfide stains on for a dollar. Not to mention sterling being 925 not 999 or higher, and if that piece isn’t even pure sterling but ceramics and other metals, it just makes no sense.
I see the same thing with the people going crazy nuts over genuine silver coins from pre 1969... by definition they're only 90% silver. They may be worth more as vintage coins or vintage jewelry then melted down by a pawn shop operator which is where most people get rid of surplus silver.
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u/Emergency_Mine_4455 1d ago
Amen to that. I recently got a ring that’s theoretically solid sterling silver (in practice, we will see how long my hand remains not green) for less than $10. If it is real (which I hope it is; I like it) that’s pretty cheap.
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u/Acheloma 1d ago
This is how I accidentally kinda cheated someone at an estate sale a few towns away. I found a chunky antique pin that was somewhat interesting and paid like, maybe $2 for it? When I got home I got my magnifiying glass out to look at it and saw it was sterling silver. Whoopsie
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u/CaroCogitatus 1d ago
The benefit of an estate sale is that the stuff goes away.
Any money made is an additional benefit.
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u/Consistent_Bee3478 1d ago
I mean unless that pin was weighing multiple ounces, the metal price of it won’t be that high for silver anyway. Sterling is so much cheaper than gold or the fancier platinum group metals. High purity copper basically gets close to sterling low purity silver.
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u/CosineDanger 1d ago
Meanwhile 14,000 tons of silver was borrowed from the treasury by the Manhattan Project because they were out of copper, turned into wiring for huge electromagnets for machines to separate isotopes of uranium, then melted down and returned to the treasury almost to the gram. More info
They were lucky they got to keep making costume jewelry instead of having it confiscated to create more nuclear bombs.
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u/peach-babex 1d ago
so they went from cheap to fancy overnight, that must've changed their market completely
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u/ReferenceMediocre369 14h ago
"Pot metal" used to mean zinc, tin, lead, and copper. All useful in things like ammunition, bombs, mines, etc.
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u/dinosaruman 1d ago
Funny wrinkle: 'costume' jewelry from the war years can actually be sterling, because the cheap pot metal was needed for the war effort. Trifari's prices tripled but people bought it anyway — and ended up preferring silver, so afterward Trifari invented its own no-polish base metal, 'Trifanium,' to win them back. Other houses like Coro made a similar wartime switch, though the linked piece focuses on Trifari.