The cost of a piece from the past won’t reflect the recent steep rise in gold prices, and the weak U.S. dollar may help international buyers, too.
The jewelry industry has been having a bumpy ride this year. Tariffs, inflation and the steeply rising price of gold (up more than 60 percent since early 2024) have pushed the cost of new items in most jewelry boutiques and department stores far beyond what they were just a year ago.
But not everyone in the trade is complaining. Sellers of vintage jewelry, insulated from some of the current economic volatility because they deal in pieces made decades or even centuries ago, occupy a sliver of the market where price increases haven’t been as steep and business has been quite good.
“I’m thrilled” by the elevated price of gold, said Benjamin Macklowe, the president of Macklowe Gallery, a jewelry and decorative arts business in New York City. As a seller of items such as a 16th-century ring set with a Roman mosaic and Angela Cummings’s 1980s designs for Tiffany & Company, he isn’t worried by many of the spiraling costs affecting contemporary jewelry production.
“We are very happy all the great jewelry companies have to manufacture at $3,400 an ounce,” Mr. Macklowe said, as that “makes everything I sell look so unbelievably well valued.” As an example, he noted that a weighty 1940s tank bracelet in gold would be about $17,000 at Macklowe, while a new piece of comparable size might cost “four, five or six times more.”
“People see incredible value because they’re getting the history, they’re getting the uniqueness of design, they’re getting the amazing manufacturing,” he said. “It’s got a real collectible quality to it without the price being like a collectible piece being made today.”
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