Handcrafted Sterling Silver Jewelry. A Buyers Opinion
When well made there is nothing so beautiful as a unique piece of handcrafted sterling silver jewelry. I recently had the great fortune of purchasing several pieces of high quality sterling silver jewelry and I was absolutely delighted with each one. They ranged from very delicate to quite bold and heavy. The stones and gems used were just individual enough to add charm without looking mismatched. I will certainly go again to purchase more pieces from the seller. It was a perfectly delightful experience in every way. I have had the opposite experience as well having purchases rings that appeared to have a beautiful, genuine abalone stone setting only to discover later that the top half of the stone was clear plastic with only a thin sliver of actual abalone under it.
After buying and selling on eBay for many years now, I have rarely felt cheated. I feel blessed to have met many wonderful seller and buyers as well. I have a small set of guide lines that I am very strict about when buying anything at all on eBay. It has served me well.
I check the feedback first. I don’t just look at the percentages, but I also check to see how many mutual withdrawals there have been. That can be a very telling little detail that is often missed I think. I begin by rarely considering sellers with lower than 98.5% feedback scores. And I want to see sellers who have a history as a seller.
The new star rating system is of far less value to me because there is no accountability. So I pretty much ignore that one. It is easy to see if a seller is charging too much for the shipping. But if the seller has a low number of negatives, I will take the time to go back and see why they got them. Most negatives seem to me to come from new buyers who don’t contact the seller before leaving the negative, or don’t wait long enough for the item to arrive. I ignore those. But if there is a pattern of slow shipping, or complaints by the buyers that the seller was rude, then I will probably take my business elsewhere.
I am also interested in buying from seller who give feedback. I don’t expect an seller to leave feedback until I as the buyer have gotten the items and left feedback for them. But then I do expect feedback in return. A seller who has thousands of feedbacks and has left only a few hundreds in return is not one I am going to feel cared about as a buyer.
Why is all this important to me when buying sterling silver jewelry? Because all I have is their claim that I am getting the quality that I will be happy with. So I need to establish a trust factor based on 2 things. One will be the pictures I see with the listing and one is the “picture” I get in my head of the seller. Since that will be all I will have to go on, it is very important that I get a very accurate “pictures” of these 2 things so I have a very small chance of being disappointed with my purchases.
Once I decide to buy from a seller, I look very carefully at the pictures in their listings. Here I believe it is very important for the seller to take outstanding photographs of what they are selling. If a jewelry seller is using the same picture of an item that appears over and over in the list of items for sale, I know I am not going to be getting what I see in the picture. That is a huge red flag to me. I like to see unique detail in the over all list of items. Cookie cutter stuff isn’t what I am shopping for.
Finally, since I usually buy several items at the same time from a single seller, I am interested in whether the seller will combine shipping and whether they will actually respond to my single email asking about shipping. No response from the seller is also a red flag.
That said, I can say from experience that I have found fabulous sterling silver jewelry on eBay at great prices. And those were the steps I take when shopping for it.
Happy eBaying everyone.