Anyone have experience selling jewelry?

[endparenthesis]

I have a rather expensive piece of jewelry that fell into my hands that I'd like to sell. Unfortunately I have no idea where to do it. eBay and other auction sites appear to be totally saturated with lots of sellers and few buyers. Craigslist... well, dealing with people on craigslist is a nightmare so that will be a last resort.

Does anyone know the best place to start? Maybe something between a pawn shop (where they won't know what they're looking at) and a boutique (where they'll just laugh at me)? Are there any brick and mortar chains out there for this purpose?

 

[swords]

I would at least try Ebay, what have you got to loose other than the dollar or so listing fee? You can always put a reserve on it when you post incase it doesn't go as high as you like. Make sure the buyer pay for insurance (make it required) be sure to show good photos of it in the ad and ship in a timely manner and it should be fine.

Some things don't get many bidders until the last minute, jewelry and stuff is probably one of those "sniper items" people watch until the times almost up and then bid like crazy. Being it can go pretty high in prices. I don't think anyone bid all week on my old 1960s model tattoo gun until the last day of teh auction and then and the final sale was like $800! I bought it at a swap meet for $20 as a neat novelty since it still worked but needles for that style were not possible to get so it was worthless to me. The winning bidder own tattoo museum in PA somwhere who was gonna display it. Don't discount ebay, it's great!

 

[PlantAKiss]

If you sell it to someone who is going to resell it....you will either get nothing for it or you'll be charged a high commission (40% usually) to sell it for you. General rule of thumb is a reseller (for example an antique dealer) wants to make 100% so they will offer you half of, not the value necessarily, but what they think they can actually get for it. There can be a big difference between the value of something and what it would really sell for. (Bad grammar.)

Ebay is a good option (waaay less commission) BUT...it IS saturated with jewelry so prices are low because competition is high. (eBay is good for the rarer stuff.) However, if its really a nice piece of jewely and you put in a dynomite description, you might do better there.

Don't think people at pawn shops don't know what they have. They deal in assorted merchandise including tons of jewelry every day. They'll know real stones or real precious metals and will know market values.

Your best bet for making the most money is to sell it directly to someone who wants it with no middle man. Barring that, eBay with the lower commission fees might be your best bet.