Looking for Vintage Costume Jewelry? a Quick-Start Guide to Bidding on EBay (Part II)

In Part One I covered the importance of obtaining good quality pictures, both front and back, of the vintage jewelry you're bidding on. We discussed carefully checking out an item's photos, making sure to ask the right questions of your seller, reviewing a seller's rating and getting a shipping and handling cost before you bid. All of which are pretty obvious I know. Now I'd like to go over a few less obvious tips and pitfalls, learned by experience, which I hope will help you out so that you don't have to learn the hard way as I did.

Dimensions: Pay attention to them if they're in the listing. If not, ask. I found this out the hard way when I purchased a rhinestone brooch. Oh, the pin was a dazzler, well-constructed from the looks of it and I got it at a great price. The funny part was when it arrived. I could barely see it! The photo in the listing was excellent but with macro photography, of course, what I was looking at was a close up and at first glance the item looked pretty substantial in size. It wasn't the seller's fault; it was mine. The dimensions were included in the listing but again, I was so bedazzled by the picture that I hadn't bothered to look. Now I keep a little 6' ruler in the vicinity of our PC; when I browse Ebay you'd better believe I'm hauling out that little ruler as I window shop.