Identifying unmarked pieces is one of the biggest mysteries costume jewelry collectors face. With a little know-how you'll become a regular Sherlock Holmes. Start your jewelry detective journey here.

Durable and stylish, mass-produced copper jewelry in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s is as colorful to wear as it is worry-free. Enjoy its beauty throughout the day and move on with your business.

Costume jewelry expert Pamela Wiggins Siegel discusses the Napier Co.'s jewelry from the 1920s and gives tips for dating it.

Styles reviving the decade include costume jewelry fashioned from natural elements like wood, leather, horn, and seashells, vividly hued statement pieces, over-sized chains and pearls.

During the 1930s and ‘40s it was considered junk jewelry. But today, as Pamela Wiggins Siegel explains, costume jewelry is loved by collectors as "sparkling treasures." Fun and affordable, costume jewelry offers an inexpensive means to make any fashion statement.

It’s not everyday a woman’s fashion accessory gets to pull double duty as a weapon, but according to advertisements in noted magazines such as Harpers Weekly, from the late 1890s to about 1920 that’s exactly how some manufacturers advertised their hatpins.