if you want to start investing in precious metals by purchasing “Liquidation” and “Store Return” jewelry, or if you want to make money flipping jewelry, here’s a couple things you need to know:

1. NEVER, EVER, EVER buy from China.  If you want to learn why, read our blog post 7 Reasons to NEVER Buy From China.  

2. Buy ONLY through a legitimate liquidator, like us (BigBrandWholesale.com) who is an authorized third party dealer and gets all of their merchandise directly from big stores (M*cys, Saks, N*rdstr*m, etc).

3. You WANT the jewelry to have clearance stickers all over the hang tags because if it doesn’t you’re likely getting scammed in some way:

As you will notice, MOST of the time there is a sticker on the item that says what store it came from. Everything I am showing you is stuff we got in from N*RDSTR*M, which is why you will likely notice their company name on a lot of things:

Stores usually do not dump brand new stock. Stores usually liquidate it because it has been on clearance for a specified amount of weeks and has been marked down a certain amount of times OR because it is broken / damaged / has been returned. My point is, if the person is offering brand-spanking-new, undamaged and clearance-sticker-free precious metal jewelry you better be careful where you walk because there’s red flags EVERYWHERE.

4. It is common for some pieces to be inside clear little bags:

If you look at the bags they SHOULD usually have a sticker on them that was applied by the store (i.e.: Kohls, M*CYS, etc) that has some random info and often says the name of the store:

5. The level of damage can seriously vary. “SALVAGE” usually means it’s going to be total scrap. For example, you might have a hang tag with ONE gold earring but the second is missing. If you’re just trying to collect precious metals this is fine however you don’t want to end up with a box full of plastic beads, unless your daughter loves to do craft projects:

6. Generally speaking, “Liquidations” means the overall damage percentage should be 0% - 20% maximum. “Store Returns” can have 50% or more imperfect, but should also contain lots of brand new items. “Shelf Pulls” can go either way; were they pulled from shelves for being damaged or were they pulled from shelves because they have been sitting since Christmas and it’s now January 29th? And, as mentioned, “Salvage” usually means it’s destroyed.

7. The TYPE of merchandise you buy truly depends on your goal. If you’re just looking for scrap then you absolutely should buy Store Returns and Salvage, but if you plan to sell the good pieces to make your cherry picked items “free”, then you should aim for Liquidations or Shelf Pulls unless you don’t mind spending a lot of time fixing items, in which case you should get Store Returns. 

8.  Silver COLOR and Sterling Silver are different things.  You want the jewelry you buy to be heavy on ".925 Sterling" as well as Karat gold, which will be advertised as "14K", "24K", etc. 

9.  If you plan to embark on this awesome venture, before you begin, grab a cheap little kit off Amazon that will allow you to easily remove the pieces you want to keep.  All you need is something like this $16 kit that has absolutely everything:

10. And lastly, you want to make sure the jewelry is ultimately from stores that carry precious metal jewelry.  I would suggest avoid jewelry liquidations from stores like Walmart and instead aim for M*CYS, N*RDSTR*M, Saks, Dillards, BL**MINGDALES and other higher-end establishments.  On occasion you can hit the jackpot with K-Mart and Sears (they are the same company) however you have to make sure you're not getting "fashion jewelry" otherwise you'll end up with a lot of $12 retail bead necklaces and such. 

Now it's time to check out what jewelry we have in stock today at BigBrandWholesale.com