Royal Regency Jewelry — Resources
Digital Guides for Jewelry Buyers
Field manuals written dealer-to-dealer
The two skills every jewelry buyer needs — reading marks, and testing gold
The Walk-Away List
Never Overpay for "Silver" Again
The free list of the pieces — and the prices — to walk away from when you're buying vintage jewelry. The quick checks that stop you overpaying for "silver" and costume pieces, before the money leaves your hand.
Free. Delivered by email — read on phone, tablet, or print.
The Hallmark Decoder
How to Read Jewelry Marks Like a Dealer
— and Never Leave Money on the Table Again
The difference between a $20 trinket and a $200 find is usually about two millimetres wide — stamped on the back of the brooch, inside the ring shank, on the tongue of the clasp. Most people never look. Dealers always look.
This is the field manual I wish someone had handed me when I started buying and selling antique jewelry. Twenty-four pages covering the British, American, French, German, Mexican, and Italian hallmark systems — written dealer-to-dealer, with zero academic fluff.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- The full British hallmark system — town marks, date letters, maker's marks, duty marks, and how to date British pieces using date letters and assay marks
- American, French, German, Mexican & Italian marks — the systems you'll actually encounter at flea markets and estate sales
- Maker marks that print money — Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef, Georg Jensen, Taxco masters, and how to spot the fakes
- Fakes & pitfalls — forged hallmarks, transplanted marks, misleading stamps, and the red flags that save you from bad buys
- The 30-second flea market read — my actual workflow for evaluating a piece on the spot
- Quick-reference cheat sheets — "if you see THIS, it means THAT" tables, fineness conversions, British date letter shortcuts
- Three corrections the internet gets wrong (the 1904 myth, the 1976 myth, the STERLING myth)
Who This Is For
- Flea market pickers who want to stop guessing and start knowing
- New jewelry resellers building their eye
- Etsy/eBay sellers who want to describe pieces accurately — and price them right
- Collectors who want to verify what they're buying
- Anyone who's ever flipped a piece over, seen tiny stamps, and thought "I wish I knew what that meant"
The Dealer's Guarantee
If this guide doesn't change how you look at jewelry marks within 14 days, email me for a full refund. No forms, no hassle, no hard feelings.
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Fool's Gold: Spot Fake, Plated & Filled Jewelry Before You Buy
The dealer's field manual for the metal half of the skill
A dealer's field manual for everything that ISN'T reading hallmarks: how to test metal, how to read construction, and how to spot the fakes that marks can't catch — plus a bought-a-fake recovery playbook.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- The five faces of fake — solid-but-wrong-karat, gold-filled, rolled plate, electroplate, vermeil, and outright counterfeits
- Plated vs filled vs vermeil vs RGP — legal definitions, what each is worth, and how to tell them apart without lab equipment
- The tests that work — heft, magnet, specific gravity (DIY method + density table), acid testing, electronic testers, plus the 30-second price test
- The tests that lie — XRF surface limits, thermal tester blind spots, tungsten beating the scale
- Construction and era tells — cast porosity, solder seams, handmade vs machine, and the anachronisms that expose fakes
- The tungsten problem — how a $100,000 fraud beat every non-destructive test, and the layered defense that catches it
- Stamp fraud, Native American jewelry law, the 60-second metal read, a one-page cheat sheet, and the bought-a-fake recovery playbook
Who This Is For
- Flea market pickers who want to stop getting burned
- Estate sale and pawn shop buyers testing on the spot
- New jewelry resellers building their testing kit
- Etsy/eBay sellers who want to accurately describe and test their pieces
- Anyone who's ever bought gold and wondered afterwards if it was real
The Dealer's Guarantee
If this guide doesn't change how you evaluate gold within 14 days, email me for a full refund. No forms, no hassle, no hard feelings.
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Real Stone or Glass? The 60-Second Tests That Tell
The dealer's field manual for the stone half of the skill
No pocket test proves a stone is natural — and any guide that promises one is selling false confidence. This dealer's field manual teaches the 60-second elimination funnel (loupe, polariscope, dichroscope), the loupe catch for lead-glass-filled ruby, the GRA moissanite certificate scam, the FTC disclosure law a seller owed you, and the honest limits of every field test. 38 pages, 14 chapters, full cheat sheets.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- The 60-second elimination funnel — the loupe, polariscope, and dichroscope routine that sorts real stones from glass and synthetics right at the tray
- The loupe catch for lead-glass-filled ruby — the filled stone sold as natural, and the tell that gives it away
- The GRA moissanite certificate scam — what those certificates actually prove, and how to test the stone instead of the paper
- The FTC disclosure law a seller owed you — the treatment disclosures the law requires before you pay
- The honest limits of every field test — what a test can prove, what it can only suggest, and when to walk away
- Full cheat sheets — the whole system distilled into quick-reference pages for the flea market
Who This Is For
- Flea market and estate sale buyers who handle stones, not just metal
- New jewelry resellers building their eye for gemstones
- Anyone who's ever held a "ruby" up to the light and wondered if it was glass
The Dealer's Guarantee
If this guide doesn't change how you evaluate gemstones within 14 days, email me for a full refund. No forms, no hassle, no hard feelings.
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The Estate Sale Buyer's Guide
How to Find Valuable Jewelry at Estate Sales, Flea Markets & Garage Sales — and Never Overpay Again
The people running estate sales want the house empty by Sunday night. They're pricing for speed, not value. That gap between what they charge and what something is actually worth? That's your profit margin. Thirty-one pages covering what to bring, where to look, what to check, what to pay, and what to walk away from — including the tungsten-core gold fakes that are fooling people right now. Written dealer-to-dealer, zero fluff.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- Your field kit — the tools that fit in your pocket (about $30 total)
- Timing strategy — when to show up, first-hour vs last-day, the Sunday rule
- Reading the marks — karat stamps, walk-away marks, maker marks that print money
- The money pieces — what experienced pickers grab first
- Spotting fakes — including tungsten-core gold, era-correctness rules, repro costume tells
- Pricing on the spot — melt math with worked examples, your walk-away number
- The art of the deal — word-for-word negotiation scripts
- Phone-friendly cheat sheets — karat marks, maker marks, red flags, melt formula
Who This Is For
- Estate sale shoppers who want to stop guessing and start knowing
- Flea market and garage sale pickers building their eye
- New jewelry resellers who want to buy right the first time
- Anyone who's ever held "gold" at a sale table and couldn't verify it
The Dealer's Guarantee
If this guide doesn't change how you buy at estate sales within 14 days, email me for a full refund. No forms, no hassle, no hard feelings.
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Thrift Store Gold
Finding Valuable Jewelry in Thrift Stores — How the Stores, Tags & Auctions Really Work
The jewelry on a thrift store floor is not a random sample of what people donated — it has already been sorted, triaged, skimmed into boutiques, and diverted online, so what reaches the rack is the filter's pricing errors and misidentifications. This dealer's field manual teaches you to hunt those errors using the stores' own published mechanics: jewelry is final sale in every regional return policy researched, the no-negotiating wall is written policy rather than a clerk's mood, and the colour on the tag is a calendar, not a price tier. Thirteen chapters, every melt number worked at dated spot prices, and an Honest Ledger chapter that refuses to invent the hit-rate statistics nobody actually has.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- The filtered river — how a donation becomes a price tag: baseline lists, asking-price comps, and the AI pricing systems now hunting the same errors you are
- Final sale, documented — jewelry sits in no returnable category in any published regional policy researched; the examination at the counter IS your return policy
- The negotiation wall — Salvation Army Chicago's published "NO NEGOTIATING," Goodwill DC's refusal to re-price on request, and the three narrow doors that actually exist
- Tag calendars, region by region — the colour is the week the item hit the floor, never a price tier: Nebraska's 50% week, Southern California's $2.79 / $2.49 / $1.99 end-of-cycle, Southeast Michigan's Monday change
- Where the good stock went — ShopGoodwill's 130+ sellers and landed-cost math, the boutique skim, and GoodwillFinds, the channel that closed 28 March 2025 and stale guides still recommend
- In the aisle, legally — eyes, loupe, magnet, and phone, and the hard line: no acid and no scratch tests on merchandise you don't own
- Melt floors and walk-away numbers — the formula that never rots, worked at dated 13 October 2026 spot prices, with the exit (refiner vs pawn) chosen before you buy
- The Honest Ledger and cheat sheets — no invented hit rates; the famous finds with true labels (sold, estimated, appraised, distorted), plus the tag-language decoder, regional-systems worksheet, and walk-away card
Who This Is For
- Thrift store and Goodwill shoppers who walk past the jewelry case guessing
- Jewelry resellers who want the stores' own rules working for them, not against them
- Flea market and estate sale pickers adding the thrift channel to their route
- Anyone who has paid "gold" money for a final-sale piece they couldn't take back
The Dealer's Guarantee
If this guide doesn't change how you buy at thrift stores within 14 days, email me for a full refund. No forms, no hassle, no hard feelings.
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Price It Right
How to Price Vintage & Antique Jewelry from Sold Evidence, Not Asking Prices
Fifty-four pages. The selling-side companion to the buying guides: how to price vintage and antique jewelry from sold evidence — a melt floor, a dated sold-comp range, and the channel net you actually keep.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- The Two Anchors — the melt floor below and the dated sold-comp range above, and the channel net you actually keep
- Melt Math, Done Right — weight × fraction × spot, with the troy-ounce conversion and the payout tiers beneath the floor
- Sold Comps: Finding the True Price — eBay's Best Offer display lie, why the public sold page shows the asking price, and where true prices live
- The Window Discipline — dated comps in the last 6–12 months, direction, velocity, sell-through, and the last-print trap
- Pricing the One-of-a-Kind — the no-comp protocol: the adjacent-comp ladder, floor, test format, discovery schedule, and reading the dials
- One Piece, Five Prices — the full fee stacks for eBay, Etsy, Whatnot, Mercari, Poshmark, and your own site, checked October 2026
- Offers Are Data — what 26.45 million eBay negotiations say about the expected offer, round prices, and send-offers before public cuts
- Markdowns, Relists & the Stale Piece — the advance ladder, re-comp before you relist, and the FTC and New Jersey was-price law
- The Pricing Worksheet — the one-page protocol, the fill-in worksheet, and the pricing log that becomes your own sold-comp database
Who This Is For
- Jewelry resellers pricing vintage and antique pieces from evidence instead of other sellers' asking prices
- Buyers from the earlier guides who now need the selling half of the skill
- Live and auction sellers deciding start prices from a floor, not folklore
- Anyone whose listings sit because the price was copied, not computed
The Dealer's Guarantee
If this guide doesn't change how you price within 14 days, email me for a full refund. No forms, no hassle, no hard feelings.
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Never Get Lowballed
The Pawn Shop & Gold Buyer Playbook
Sixty-three pages. The sell-side companion to Price It Right. The same piece is worth four prices — pawn counter, gold-buying event, local jeweler, refiner by mail — and the lowball is priced in before you speak: by which counter you're standing at, what the buyer thinks you know, and whether another buyer is waiting. This is the defense, built at home: know your melt before you leave, sort the lot before they do, collect competing written bids in dollars per gram, and recognize the seventeen pressure moves when they start.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- Know Your Number — melt, spot, and the denominator rule: every percentage names its base before anyone names a price
- Sort the Lot — split scrap, signed costume, wearable jewelry, and stone-bearing pieces before a buyer averages them away
- The Counters, Ranked — pawn shops, hotel gold-buying events, local jewelers, estate buyers, mail-in refiners, and auction platforms, and how each one actually pays
- Translate the Appraisal — why replacement value is not resale value, and how to turn an appraisal back into a number you can negotiate from
- The Tactics, Named — all seventeen pressure moves, from fake-doubt testing and lot-lumping to invented fees and urgency, each with its counter-question
- Negotiation That Survives Fact-Check — the informed-anchor rule, the single-best-bid correction, and the famous rules that fail verification, printed as refutations
- The Competing-Bid Protocol — the fill-in bid sheet: same day, same lot, same spot, written bids in dollars per gram, and a walk-away number set in advance
- Selling It Yourself Without Getting Scammed — the FTC scam set, payment-app terms as written, platform protections and their caps, and the meet-up protocol
- Consignment, Mail-In & the Legal Floor — the eight protective contract clauses, the mail-in protection sequence, New Jersey's hold and pawn-loan rules from the statutes, and timing and drift for sellers
Who This Is For
- Anyone selling inherited or family jewelry once, who wants the dealer's preparation instead of a buyer's mercy
- Resellers who sell across pawn and gold-buyer counters and want competing bids, not patter
- Executors and families deciding between a counter offer, consignment, mail-in, or selling it themselves
- Anyone who has ever been quoted a percentage without being told what it was a percentage of
The Dealer's Guarantee
If this guide doesn't change how you sell within 14 days, email me for a full refund. No forms, no hassle, no hard feelings.
Secure checkout via Gumroad. PDF delivered instantly. Also available on Etsy.
Don't Ruin It
Cleaning & Caring for Vintage Jewelry
Forty-six pages. The keeping companion to the buying guides. Value in antique and vintage jewelry lives in the original surface, and almost every popular cleaning, polishing, repair, and storage habit removes or alters it — irreversibly. This is the defense, built on mechanisms and the market's documented verdict: what dips do to silver and patina, what chlorine does to karat gold (and doesn't do to platinum), why foil-backed stones never soak, what the machines and the buffing wheel actually take, and the on-the-record dealer rulebook for which repairs end a buyer's interest. Inside: per-material verdicts, the never-submerge list, the storage rules, and a four-question decision protocol for any piece before anything touches it.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- Know What You're Holding — the five constructions that change every rule, and the dry-cloth default for any piece you can't identify
- Silver, Honestly — what a dip actually is, why the converted surface re-tarnishes faster, and why the dark oxidation in the recesses is detail, not dirt
- Gold & Platinum — chlorine stress-corrosion at prong bends and solder joints, and the printed correction: chlorine does not hurt platinum
- Foil, Paste & Rhinestones — why water is the enemy, why a dead stone can't be re-foiled by an owner, and the emergency protocol for the day a piece gets wet anyway
- Pearls, Opals & the Porous Stones — and the two refuted myths, oiling opals and the safety-deposit box, each busted with its mechanism
- The Machines — per-material ultrasonic verdicts, steam, and why the buffing wheel is subtraction: edges, engraving, hallmarks, and original finishes
- The Dealer Rulebook, On the Record — a named dealer's buy/no-buy lines from Rapaport, translated into owner decisions, and the three-new-parts authenticity account
- Resizing, Replacement Stones & Re-Plating — the two-to-three-sizing lifetime, why a replaced center stone is an identity change, and why rhodium is a one-way door
- Glue, String & Storage — the adhesive classes, restringing and its loss-limiting knots, and the drawer damage: rubber bands, degrading plastics, and the humidity paradox
- The Decision Protocol — Identify, original surface, least intervention, whose hands — plus the red-flag phrases to walk away from at any counter
Who This Is For
- Anyone who inherited family jewelry and wants to keep it without quietly cutting its value
- Collectors and wearers of antique and vintage pieces whose care advice so far has been “just clean it”
- Resellers whose finds pass through their own hands — and their own sink — before they reach a buyer
- Anyone who has ever been told a dip, a buff, or a re-plate is “routine” and wondered what it takes with it
The Dealer's Guarantee
If this guide doesn't change how you care for vintage jewelry within 14 days, email me for a full refund. No forms, no hassle, no hard feelings.
Secure checkout via Gumroad. PDF delivered instantly. Also available on Etsy.
Costume Jewelry That Pays
The Valuable Makers
Forty-five pages. The priced map of the costume tray. The tray is not priced by the name on the back — it is priced by tier, trait, and proof: a handful of makers pay real money signed (Schreiner singles clear about $300 to $960 on dated sold results), a working tier pays week in and week out (Juliana, Weiss, Eisenberg, Sherman, Ciner, Coro's better lines), the famous mid-tier names are lot fodder at $2 to $6 a piece in bulk, and a set of traits — carved Bakelite, construction in combination, book chain with a locket — pays with no signature at all. Inside: every maker's range with its sold basis printed beside it, Best Offer displays flagged as the upper bounds they are, the unsigned-attribution ladder, the fakes and married-pieces chapter, channel strategy by tier, and the sixty-second tray sort. Where the evidence would not build a range, the book prints that instead of a number.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- The Tray Problem — why most costume jewelry is noise, the $2–$6-a-piece lot reality, and the five tiers that sort the whole tray
- Tier 1: The Names That Pay Signed — Schreiner, Schiaparelli, Hattie Carnegie figurals, Joseff of Hollywood, the jelly-belly form, and Miriam Haskell's documented ceiling
- Tier 0: Couture Costume — Chanel and Dior Gripoix money is real and authentication-gated, and the Mitchel Maer lesson: unsigned couture sells for a fraction even when genuine
- Tier 2: The Working Tier — Juliana singles vs the set premium, Weiss and the faked-mark warning, Eisenberg, Sherman, Ciner, and Coro's better lines
- Tier 3: Lot Fodder, Honestly — Napier, Monet, plain Trifari, plain Coro: what singles actually clear, the exceptions that escape the tier, and the lot math
- Traits That Pay Without a Signature — construction in combination, Bakelite's own value world, aurora borealis as a dating tool, book chain with a locket, lava cameos, figurals and enamel
- The Unsigned Game — documented unsigned vs the unverifiable, the unsigned discount, the honest-language ladder, and why unverified prices as unbranded
- Fakes, Repros, and Married Pieces — fake Weiss marks, the jelly-belly repro pattern, mould-cast “Ciner,” period-copy “Carnegie,” and why a married set is worth its parts
- Where the Money Actually Realizes — the channel map by tier, and why 1stDibs and Ruby Lane asking prices are not values
- Market Weather — the 2026 brooch moment, revival cycles, honest seasonality, and pricing off the cluster, never the ceiling print
- The Sixty-Second Tray Sort — the field routine: tier, trait, proof, channel, with a walk-away line for every tier
Who This Is For
- Estate-sale, thrift-store, and flea-market buyers who dig through costume trays and want to know what to pull out of them
- Resellers who buy mixed lots and need the per-piece math before they bid
- Collectors of Schreiner, Juliana, Weiss, and Bakelite who want sold-money reality instead of price-guide nostalgia
- Anyone sitting on an inherited jewelry box, wondering which pieces in it are actually worth money
The Dealer's Guarantee
If this guide doesn't change how you read a costume tray within 14 days, email me for a full refund. No forms, no hassle, no hard feelings.
Secure checkout via Gumroad. PDF delivered instantly. Also available on Etsy.
The Jewelry Seller's Whatnot Playbook
Run the Room
Run the room: the only guide in the series about the platform itself. A Whatnot price is made before the lot runs — by the fee tier your last 28 days locked, by the start (there is no reserve; the start is the floor), by the running order, and by the regulars. Inside: the September 21, 2026 tier machine and the full US rate table, what a hammer actually pays (the keep formula and the $1–$1,000 table), Premier's discount and its November 1, 2026 end, the three-start system and the pre-bid clearing mechanic, running order built for a seven-minute watch, the money week (bundling, the November 4 carrier-adjustment cliff, payout timing corrected), the documented 44.9% top-ten buyer concentration and the club that produces it, the bill-back map, comping without a sold button, and the honest limits — no income promises, and worked examples labeled as examples wherever the author's own figures stay private. Forty-seven pages, thirteen chapters, four printable cheat sheets.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
The Flea Market Buying Checklist
Every check between the tray and your wallet — on one page
A working antique dealer's buying routine in the order it actually happens at an outdoor table: scan the table and read the seller, run the in-hand checks, do the melt math, then decide — with the haggle lines that work outdoors and the triggers that tell you to walk away.
Instant delivery. Read on phone, tablet, or print.
What's Inside
- Before You Touch It — work the table, read the seller, spot the jewelry tray before the crowd picks it over
- The In-Hand Checks — where the stamps hide (shank, clasp tongue, posts, bail), the magnet done right (body, never the clasp), the plating suffixes that mean "not solid" (GF, RGP, HGE, GP), rub-point wear, prongs vs. glue, and why "heavy" proves nothing anymore
- The Price Check — the melt formula with the purity table (.417 / .585 / .750 / .925), the troy-ounce conversion, a worked example, and the walk-away rule that keeps you from handing the seller your profit
- Decide — buy signals, the haggle lines that work outdoors (bundling, cash in hand, exact small bills), and the walk-away triggers that save you from the story that keeps changing
- Both versions included — the one-page printable (US Letter) for your pocket, plus a tall phone-readable version for the table-side glance
Who This Is For
- Flea market, yard sale, and swap meet jewelry buyers who want a dealer's routine, not a textbook
- Resellers who price on the spot and need melt math they can trust
- Anyone who has ever paid "gold" money for a plated piece — once is enough
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Darren Robinson runs Royal Regency Jewelry, dealing in antique and vintage jewelry online and at flea markets. He learned to test gold the expensive way — by getting it wrong — and wrote these guides so you don't have to.
