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Art Deco inspired abalone shell pendant earrings displayed in a Daisy Lain velvet jewellery box

Vintage vs Antique Jewellery: What’s the Difference?

There is a point, when looking through older jewellery, where the words start to blur a little.

Vintage. Antique. Retro. Pre-owned. Vintage-inspired.

They are often thrown around as though they all mean roughly the same thing, but they don’t. And if you are buying, collecting or simply trying to work out what you already own, it helps to know the difference.

The simplest place to start is with age.

An antique piece of jewellery is generally understood to be at least 100 years old. Vintage jewellery is younger, although still old enough to belong to an earlier period rather than contemporary fashion.

That sounds wonderfully straightforward. In practice, of course, jewellery has a habit of making things more interesting.

When Does Jewellery Become Antique?

Think of antique as the 100-year line.

Victorian jewellery falls comfortably on the antique side of it, as does Edwardian jewellery. Early Art Deco pieces are now moving into that category too.

That last point can feel odd at first.

A brooch made in 1925 may now qualify as antique, while another made only a handful of years later may still be described as vintage. Nothing magical happened to the first brooch when it reached its hundredth birthday. It simply crossed the age threshold collectors and dealers use.

And antique does not automatically mean diamonds, gold or precious stones either.

You can find antique fine jewellery, but you can also find antique costume jewellery, brooches, clips and decorative pieces made from far humbler materials.

The age is what makes it antique.

Vintage Covers a Much Bigger World

Vintage jewellery is a broader category, and probably the one most people encounter when they begin collecting.

It can include jewellery from the middle and later decades of the twentieth century, and the fun part is that the look can change completely from one decade to another.

A 1950s necklace might be full of crystal, elaborate settings and old-fashioned glamour. Move into the 1960s and 1970s and suddenly the shapes become bolder, the colours stronger and the designs more experimental.

Then came the 1980s, when subtlety occasionally took the afternoon off.

That variety is one of the reasons vintage jewellery is so enjoyable to browse. You are not looking at one single “vintage style”. You are looking at several generations of changing fashion.

At Daisy Lain, that difference is very easy to see because pieces from different designers and decades often sit side by side. A refined mid-century Dior piece and a much bolder later necklace may both be vintage, but visually they can feel worlds apart.

What Vintage Does Not Mean

Here is where the wording gets muddled most often.

Vintage does not simply mean second-hand.

If somebody bought a necklace three years ago, wore it twice and sold it today, the necklace is pre-owned. It is not suddenly vintage because it has had another owner.

Likewise, vintage-inspired jewellery is not the same thing as vintage jewellery.

A newly made Art Deco-style bracelet may borrow all the right shapes and details from the 1920s or 1930s, but it is still a modern piece.

That distinction matters more to collectors than it does to someone buying purely for the look, but it is worth knowing what you are actually purchasing.

Is Antique Jewellery Worth More?

Sometimes. Sometimes not.
Age is only one part of the story.
A rare piece of vintage designer costume jewellery can easily be more desirable than a fairly ordinary antique piece.

Collectors may look for names such as Christian Dior, Ciner, Trifari, Hattie Carnegie, Monet or Mitchel Maer, but the name on the back is not the only consideration.
Condition can make a huge difference. So can rarity, craftsmanship and whether the jewellery still has its original stones, fittings and clasps.
A complete matching set may also attract far more interest than a single surviving piece.
This is why jewellery valuation is rarely as simple as saying, “older means more expensive”.
It doesn’t.

And What About Costume Jewellery?

Costume jewellery has its own strange reputation because the word costume can make it sound cheap or disposable.

Some of it was anything but.

During the twentieth century, major designers and jewellery houses worked with rhinestones, glass, enamel, gilt metal, simulated pearls and other non-precious materials to create pieces that were beautifully made and highly distinctive.

Today, collectors may care far more about the designer, the rarity of the piece or the quality of the design than the raw value of the materials.

That is why a vintage costume piece can sometimes command serious attention.

Working Out What You Have

Dating an older piece of jewellery can be surprisingly satisfying.

Sometimes there is an obvious signature or hallmark. Other times you have to look at smaller details: the clasp, the type of earring fitting, the way stones have been set, the metalwork or even how the piece has been assembled.

None of those clues necessarily tells the whole story on its own.

Together, though, they can start to narrow things down.

And that is probably one of the nicest parts of collecting old jewellery. You are not simply looking at an object. You are trying to understand where it came from.

So yes, the difference between vintage and antique jewellery begins with age.

But once you start looking properly, age is usually only the beginning.

At Daisy Lain, you can explore original jewellery from different periods, designers and styles, from older antique pieces through to distinctive twentieth-century costume jewellery.

Some pieces are quiet and elegant. Others are gloriously difficult to ignore.

Either way, they have already had a life before reaching you.

And that is rather the point.

Explore the Pieces Featured in This Article

The jewellery featured throughout this article comes from the Daisy Lain collection. Each piece represents a different period and character of vintage and antique jewellery.

Explore more vintage jewellery from Daisy Lain.

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