Welcome to The Discerning Blonde Vintage Costume Jewelry Store!

Thank you for visiting our Online Store!  Please bear with us as we continue with the construction of our site.  You will most likely find broken links and pages that lead to nowhere in particular for a while yet to come.  You may also notice that there are incomplete descriptions of items, or even perhaps a piece who's measurements aren't completed yet.  We apologize for this and assure you that we are striving to complete these as quickly as possible. 

Here at The Discerning Blonde, we strive to bring you the best quality jewelry possible.  Please see the "Policies and FAQ" page for information on the selection and grading of our merchandise, as well as all of the necessary information you will need on shipping, and info on returns and exchanges.  In addition, you will find all the information necessary to participate in our Lay-Away Plan, which is coming soon! 

We are also buying quality signed and unsigned costume jewelry.  Please contact us at discerningblonde@iccmall.com if you think you have something that we might be interested in.  Keep in mind that we are still in our fledgling period, so we can only offer reasonable prices for jewelry at this time.

We hope that you enjoy your visit to "The Discerning Blonde" Vintage Costume Jewelry Store, and that you come back and visit us again for all of your costume jewelry needs!

Please note:  We here at Discerning Blonde are first and foremost "collectors" of vintage costume jewelry, and as such we are pretty much still learning the ropes of retail.  We aren't going to be able to give you exact compositions of stones and such yet (We don't know fire polished from Swarovski) but we sure do know beauty when we see it!  Just bear with us as we all continue our learning here.  We'll do our level best to always make sure that your questions are answered--and done so in a timely manner, even if we don't know the answers ourselves and need to get outside help!

Now...a bit more about us and how we came into being...

The History

The Discerning Blonde is the brainchild of Michael Hamilton and Teresa Smith, both of Des Moines, IA.  They originally began their trek into costume jewelry as the result of a near accident at a Garage Sale in July 2006, when some absolutely amazing designer signed Parures accidentally slipped into the garage sale stock--for sale at $12.50 each.  Noticing the beauty and elegance of these jewelry sets by Hattie Carnegie and Eugene, Mike started to do some research on the internet on the subject of costume jewelry, and a whole new world opened up to him.

He decided to share his new found knowledge with his friend Teresa, and after much consideration they decided to make a go at selling these beautiful sets on one of the largest online auction services.  The reception was tremendous, and the jewelry sold very quickly!  The two then decided to form a partnership. With Teresa being the jewelry buyer, and Mike being the auction  master, they began actively shopping for jewelry at Garage Sales, Estate Sales, and even haunting local auction houses, buying up anything that even remotely looked interesting.

In late 2006, the pair considered opening up "The Discerning Blonde" jewelry store on that same major auction house site, but after checking out the prices that the online auction house had to offer, they agreed that it most likely wasn't in their best interests.  Shortly after that decision was made, the auction house once again increased their fees for general auctions.  Refusing to pay the higher fees, Mike quit doing the auction thing, and turned to searching for a different venue to display their merchandise. It took nearly a year, and during that time "The Discerning Blonde" vintage jewelry store idea almost became extinct do to financial limitations.

In July of 2007, the pair met up with Dana Pille, founder and owner of ICC Mall.  ICC Mall was one of many projects that he had in the working, but he  made us a deal we couldn't refuse.  Mr. Pille agreed to do the web work for the site that you are now looking at--God Bless him--and "The Discerning Blonde" was brought back to life once again..

Thank you again for visiting our store!  We look forward to satisfying all of your costume jewelry needs, so please don't hesitate to email us at discerningblonde@iccmall.com if you have any questions or concerns.

Acknowledgments

I need to take a little bit of space here to thank some people who are very special, and without their help this website would not be possible.

Shannon M.--Shannon has done a great deal of work on the photography portions of our webstore here.  Her expertise in design and display is unparalleled, and that shines through with her work here in the photographs of our jewelry.  Many of the photo's on this site were set up, decorated and photographed by her personally, and she has taken HUNDREDS of them, patiently putting up with my "No, that's not good enough--try this" corrections and my "We need a better shot of that" comments.  God Bless her--I simply cannot tell her how much her assistance in these things means to us.  Thank you Shannon, from the bottom of my heart.

Kay and Earl--My bosses at my "day" job who have known all along that I've been working hard on this during every hour of the day and night, including the time that I'm at work.  Their patience with me during my time building this site has been unending, and without that patience this shop would not exist.  Thank you two...so very much for your support.

Toni H--My Mother, without whose encouragement and nagging at me constantly to do something with my talent for jewelry brought me full circle toward the creation this site.  She knew that I've always wanted to open a shop of some sort, and she never really gave up on me.  Thanks Mom!  You're the best!!

For more information about our Policies and Procedures, please Click Here!