Suddenly everything’s coming up solid gold in the fashion collector world. Whispers of Victorian lockets, heavyweight mid-century bracelets, and French tank rings are lining the wishlists of fashion insiders and savvy shoppers alike. It’s no wonder: In just one year, the price of one troy ounce of gold has risen to $3,000—up nearly $1,000 from 2024, and double the cost it was just four years ago.
With those record-breaking figures comes a new wave of people investing in chunky, heavy vintage and antique gold jewelry—plus rare, archival pieces coming to the market from older generations looking to sell given the current cost of gold. Enter a new slew of vintage and antique gold jewelry sellers on Instagram, with hoards of pieces that sell out instantly.
Kim Limle of EstateJewelryMama lists affordable pieces as well as jewelry from the Victorian era to the 1980s, which followers snap up on Instagram livestreams before Limle can even list them on her website. TalesFromTheJunkPile, launched by Elisa Casas and run alongside her daughter Ruby Sinclair, brings followers antique and vintage gold that otherwise would have been melted, for low price points via Instagram stories. It’s impossible not to notice the community of vintage gold sellers that has been fostered specifically on social media in the past year, with accounts like Oldgoldganster, Bhunicorn, Julzgoldx, Gildedlane, Thegoldbuglondon, and many others becoming go-tos over traditional jewelry shops. These days, for many vintage lovers, solid gold jewelry has surpassed the old guard of designer handbags as the de rigeur investment.
“With the popularity of vintage and antique jewelry right now, customers are definitely appreciating pieces that are solid gold and less expensive than comparable new jewelry,” says Sinclair’s mother, Elisa, who runs the ChelseaGirl.NYC account alongside her daughter. The duo source pieces from gold scrappers in the New York City diamond district, rescuing everything from contemporary charms to historic pieces from the 19th century from being melted. “My mom and I are kind of the yin-yang when sorting in our junk piles,” says Ruby. “She’ll often first spot something antique and collectible, versus I’ll first spot a currently trendy piece millennials would die for. With that being said, when the other one picks it up, we don’t even have to speak, we can just shoot each other a look that says yes. They also curate pieces from dealers in Europe and provide competitive pricing based on the current gold market price. “One of my favorite parts of my job is selling items that I truly believe in, that hold real value, that are smart financial choices for our customers,” adds Ruby. “Gold is akin to dollars, just last week gold skyrocketed to the highest dollar per ounce in history. And the best part? They get to wear their investments!”
Elisa and Ruby in particular are seeing a huge surge in demand right now for deep yellow gold, including lots of chains and pendants for those over-the-top curated maximalist neck stacks. They are also seeing requests for chunky pieces over dainty daily wearers. Think: fringe, coins, animals, celestial, geometric, or asymmetrical. “Almost everything we sell on Instagram sells immediately. And when I say immediately, I mean within seconds,” says Elissa. “Purchasing often turns into a race for our followers,” adds Ruby.
Likewise, NoahNoahNoah.Shop, run by former fashion editor Noah Lehava can’t keep enough fine jewelry watches in stock. She even sold a mini Piaget Polo to Hailey Bieber. “There are so many stunning and unique vintage watch styles that really capture that artistry of the horological past,” she says. “Stone dial watches that utilize lapidary techniques on gold bracelets that feel more like jewelry than utility. I will say it here, cocktail watches—think the perfect merriment of a tennis bracelet and teensy watch face—are coming back in full force.” She adds that “many are seeing the gold items they bought not even a year ago worth more in melt value than they originally spent. So, they see a massive increase in their investment in a relatively short amount of time.”
In this community, many of the sellers are women, like EstateJewelryMama which is run by Kim Limle and her mother. Lately, they’ve sold 18k solid gold chains and bracelets, antique cut diamonds, 1920s–1970s Cartier and Boucheron pieces, and one-of-a-kind antique diamond statement brooches and pendants—sometimes within seconds or minutes. “I have heard from the gold scrapper dealers that more is out there because people are selling their old gold with gold being up so high,” Limle says. On her website, you might come across rare old mine cut Victorian diamond earrings for serious collectors, or the thickest tubogas choker you’ve ever seen, straight out of a collector’s dream. Prices aren’t cheap, but relatively speaking, they’re bargains compared to the current price of gold and the average cost of new designer gold jewelry.
Limle grew up with her father in the wholesale jewelry business and studied at the Gemological Institute of America, working in various jobs across jewelry and elsewhere before starting her own business, primarily on Instagram. “I love doing the live videos because I feel like hanging out with my friends, who also love jewelry,” she says. “I love the women in the Instagram community because we share so many bonds, not just jewelry but life experiences. I’ve developed deep friendships and have met amazing human beings.”
Part of the attraction of the vintage gold jewelry community on Instagram is obviously the personal nature of it. Limle often shares about issues that are important to her, like addiction, mental health, and suicide prevention treatments. And one of Lehava’s favorite parts of being a social media seller is the entertaining live feed of real time feedback. “It feels personable, which I think is important when selling something so valuable, and I can build trust and relationships with my clients right in DMs,” she says. “I love sending voice notes, which I’m sure most of my customers can attest to. The ability to do Instagram Lives, where my followers can shop instantly and ask questions throughout, is also great. The comments that flood in can be pretty hilarious and makes for a fun time. That’s not something you can replicate on an ecomm site.”
Jewelry lovers have been shopping iconic vintage gold pieces for decades, but there’s something to be said about this historic moment in time that has everything to do with wanting to get in on the investment aspect and the convergence of the sell-anywhere power of social media. “Lately it has grown more popular, in my opinion, because of the Instagram vintage and antique jewelry community of dealers and collectors,” says Limle. “I see trending styles everyday.” Adds Elissa, “When we started on Instagram, the vintage and antique jewelry community was tiny. Everyone knew each other, helped each other out, promoted friends’ Instagram accounts and bought from each other. Part of me misses those days, but I’m also grateful that its popularity and growth has helped our business immensely.” Jewelry has historically served as a wearable investment safety net for women for centuries, and our current strange times certainly call for a mix of caution and joy. What better to represent that than a thick piece of gold?