I was lucky. I had a friend who took me around to the stores. She's been doing it for years now. She does jewelry. We hit the consignment stores. I tagged along for a long time. Off and on over the course of the year. She would stand next to me, and explain to me why yes and why no. After a while, I felt confident to branch out on my own. I made a TON of costly mistakes. BUT, they were more life lessons than mistakes. I did spend a lot of time in the library, and I bought books off Ebay and Amazon (the cheap, used ones). My friend only deals with fine jewelry, name brands, anything for a quick buck. I got into the vintage stuff. It took a lot of research, and still does. There are high end and low end.
I won't touch anything else, just because I don't know. Beach keeps saying to check out the hats and belts. Every time I go, I don't know 100% what I am looking for, so I gave up on that. Same with sunglasses. I'm just sticking with jewelry, cuz that is what I know. You get an eye for it.
I also second the notion that everyone finds what they are supposed to find. I no longer stress about getting to this store or that one. There is a local guy who I totally hate. He is rude and obnoxious. He stands in front of the jewelry, won't budge an inch, grabs stuff, and makes a mess. Which he doesn't clean up. Don't be that kind of guy. I usually will straighten up the jewelry a little so it looks better than when I got there. Which leads me to the last point ... MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE SALES HELP! It really pays to be nice to them. Smile, say hello, get to know their names, just be super friendly. Some of the best buys I got came from the sales help saying, OH, do you want to look at this? I've had them pull out stuff that was priced yet, because they know I like certain jewelry. (My friend/mentor said that if you spend a long time at one store, but something, anything, so that they don't feel like they wasted a lot of time on you for nothing. Just helps them to like you.) Be super polite. I get a lot of information out of the clerks as well. They will tell me when they are going to put stuff out, or when the person is not there, so don't bother coming in.
hope this helps. BTW, reading here is great. I bought stuff because I recognized someone else posting a picture or talking about a hallmark.
I won't touch anything else, just because I don't know. Beach keeps saying to check out the hats and belts. Every time I go, I don't know 100% what I am looking for, so I gave up on that. Same with sunglasses. I'm just sticking with jewelry, cuz that is what I know. You get an eye for it.
I also second the notion that everyone finds what they are supposed to find. I no longer stress about getting to this store or that one. There is a local guy who I totally hate. He is rude and obnoxious. He stands in front of the jewelry, won't budge an inch, grabs stuff, and makes a mess. Which he doesn't clean up. Don't be that kind of guy. I usually will straighten up the jewelry a little so it looks better than when I got there. Which leads me to the last point ... MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE SALES HELP! It really pays to be nice to them. Smile, say hello, get to know their names, just be super friendly. Some of the best buys I got came from the sales help saying, OH, do you want to look at this? I've had them pull out stuff that was priced yet, because they know I like certain jewelry. (My friend/mentor said that if you spend a long time at one store, but something, anything, so that they don't feel like they wasted a lot of time on you for nothing. Just helps them to like you.) Be super polite. I get a lot of information out of the clerks as well. They will tell me when they are going to put stuff out, or when the person is not there, so don't bother coming in.
hope this helps. BTW, reading here is great. I bought stuff because I recognized someone else posting a picture or talking about a hallmark.
