Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicholle Mogavero.
Hi Nicholle, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Unless you have family in the jewelry business, you back into it from other businesses. After backing into the jewelry business from another business, my ex-husband and I opened a jewelry store (with NO experience) in Havre De Grace, MD. I won’t lie. I had NO IDEA what I was doing.
I was buying collections of inherited jewelry and didn’t have the faintest idea what I had bought. I wouldn’t have known Art Deco if I tripped over it. I knew how to test gold to make sure it was real and I went to the Gemological Institute of America to learn about gemstones, finally earning my Certified Gemologist Degree. It was a long, slow road filled with mistakes, but like all labors of love, I made it work.
Since then, I’ve not only become a Certified Gemologist, I’ve become a professional Jewelry Appraiser, and regularly give lectures and workshops on the topics of gemology and Antique jewelry in museums, private clubs, and professional organizations across the country.
Skip to now when I’ve become “The Jewelry Whisperer.” Do have the jewelry you’ve inherited and don’t know if it’s real or fake? I can help. Do you have those jewelry mysteries that you’d love to know how old it is, where it came from, and glean some family history from it? I can help. Do you know you need to get appraisals but don’t know if your jewelry is really worth it? That’s what I do. Do you wonder how you can sell all that jewelry from Great Aunt May or your grandmother that you’ll never wear, but don’t know where to go to make sure you don’t get ripped off? I do that all day long!
It’s a far cry from where I started almost 25 years ago to where I am now. Today, my full-time job is doing “Antiques Road Show” type of events (but just with jewelry) all across the country. I spend about $10,000 in marketing, have an entire community come into a jewelry store, and I operate from that jewelry store to buy all the inherited and unloved jewelry from the public. I typically buy between $75,000-$100,000 worth of jewelry in a single weekend.
That means that I need to be able to know exactly what I’m looking at if it’s gold or costume jewelry; it’s real gemstones and diamonds or glass; exactly when it was made from the 1700s all the way to jewelry made yesterday; and exactly how much to pay for it. All in 5 second flat.
If you had asked me 25 years ago that I’d be able to do this now, I’d have laughed at you. But that’s what the last 25 years have taught me and why I can now say that I’m the “Jewelry Whisperer.”
The truth is that all jewelry has a story to tell. The only question is if you want to hear it.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has hardly ever been a smooth road. Since I backed into this business from another business, I had no contacts in the jewelry business when I started. About a month after opening the store, someone wanted us to buy a 3ct diamond. First of all, we didn’t know where the money to buy it was going to come from because 3ct Diamonds don’t normally walk in the door.
Then, after we bought it, we couldn’t sell it! This was back in the late 90s when a 1ct diamond was considered above average. That meant that our customers weren’t shopping for a 3ct diamond so we had no customers to sell it to. That also means that we had to tie up the money we had used to buy it. We finally got some wholesale contacts and tried to sell it to a diamond dealer, only to discover that we had paid more than we could realize from the sale.
This is not uncommon when starting a business for most people, and I’m sure most business owners have this same story in some form. it’s all part of any new business’s learning curve.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I found my niche on Instagram and have managed to build a thriving business just through that platform. I buy, sell, and educate all from Instagram. It’s a completely different way to do business than what most people are used to, but it’s simplified the way estate, vintage and antique jewelry is bought and sold. Women are buying and selling their own jewelry now and it’s the way that most women are the most comfortable. No one wants to go to a pawn shop to sell jewelry and a lot of women feel intimidated going into traditional jewelry stores to buy jewelry.
Women have created their own way of operating in what was, until recently, a very exclusive club. The best thing is that it happened organically. We are revolutionizing the entire jewelry business. It started very grass-roots and is now a growing community. Most vintage and estate jewelry sellers, have weekly sales right on Instagram LIVE. We post diamond rings for sale in our Instagram stories and sell them within minutes. Some even link websites to their Instagram, but most sellers have found that websites are irrelevant. Why leave a platform (Instagram) to go to another platform (a website) so you can go to yet another platform (like a credit card purchasing platform) when it takes 5 seconds to do all that in someone’s Direct Messages?
The way that Jewelry Nerd is different is two-fold. The first way is that I focus on education. With all the new sellers to the platform, there have unfortunately been some people who are less than honest. I teach people how to buy SAFELY online. There are also a lot of women just like I was in the beginning- with a passion, but don’t know how to turn that passion into profit. Since I’ve walked that road, I am uniquely qualified to help them turn their hobby into a business and do it ethically and safely.
The second way that I’m different is that while most sellers SELL jewelry, my unique skill set allows me to BUY jewelry directly from average people who have it and no longer love it. I help them get that unloved jewelry into the hands of people who will love it again and give it another life. Life adopting a rescue dog! There are people who will love it, just like a rescue dog, so I can find a good home for it.
What do you think about luck?
Roman philosopher Seneca is attributed with the saying, “Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.” I’ve often found it interesting that people have these “Overnight Sensation” stories about business. What is rarely talked about are the hours of study gaining educational and professional qualifications. The years spent honing your skill. The thousand and thousands of dollars you lost due to the countless mistakes you made along the way became part of your education too.
Not to mention the time and money spent on the certification you earned – again through years of study. Everyone loves a rags-to-riches story, but the truth is that most businesses take a lot of hard work. Sometimes, your years of hard work pay off when someone you’ve helped in the past mentions you for a newspaper article like this one. That’s a bit of luck, but mostly a lot of work that went on behind the scenes for 25 years until “luck” intervened.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @JewelryNerd
- Facebook: JewelryNerd
- Youtube: JewelryNerd
Image Credits
Accredited Gemologist Association
