Reputable budget online jewelry?

September 30, 2013 5:22 AM

I'm interested in finding online sources of precious-metal jewelry at a low cost. For example, a site that had solid gold/gold plated/solid silver chains to put other jewelry on. I know ebay has a good selection, but I have found that things have been mislabeled (ie something marked solid gold that is obviously not). I also know there are some things like that on Etsy, but there has to be a source of their supplies. I'm more interested in the low cost side than the artful jewelry side (I already have lots of sites like that to drool at!).
posted by fermezporte to Shopping (5 answers total)

Fire Mountain Gems? Reputable, about as low a markup as you're going to find, wide selection. Yeah, they have lots of stuff to drool at, but if you go digging into the Jewelry Supplies section, you'll find basic chains and findings.
posted by jlkr at 5:32 AM on September 30, 2013

Rio Grande and monsterslayer.com are my recommendations. I've had good service from them both on bulk chain.
posted by pajamazon at 5:59 AM on September 30, 2013

This is a bit of an obvious one, but Blue Nile. The diamond prices there were much, much lower than I was seeing from local jewelers. I think this is also a good place to add: if a price anywhere seems too good to be true, it probably is.
posted by The Michael The at 6:16 AM on September 30, 2013

Try looking in the gold / silver bullion sections of eBay rather than the jewelry sections. A good amount of the jewelry that ends up there just needs minor repairs (if any), and you're far less likely to find plated or counterfeit pieces.

Of course, you still need to read the description thoroughly and check past feedback, but in my experience (as a seller researching where to list) there is far less crap to sift through and far fewer misleading ads.
posted by clorox at 10:16 PM on September 30, 2013

Oh, and the keyword to filter out most of the bars and coins in the bullion section is "scrap."
posted by clorox at 10:18 PM on September 30, 2013