This grid opens at $125 for a sterling silver Frank Gehry Torque ring and runs up through the mid four figures. Almost everything at the bottom of it is sterling silver, and sterling is where secondhand Tiffany is most obviously good value. Silver tarnishes, which sounds like a problem and is not, because tarnish is surface and a polishing cloth removes it. It does not thin the metal. What silver will not survive is deep scratching, since it is softer than gold, so check flat polished surfaces like the Round Tag bracelet in this grid rather than worrying about darkening. The designer collections are the other story here. Elsa Peretti and Paloma Picasso pieces were made in volume and trade well below their original prices, and the Sevillana pendant and Graffiti ring in this band are both examples. If you want a recognisable Tiffany piece for a few hundred dollars, this is where it lives.

The second grid is where Tiffany's actual margin lived, and it looks completely different. Platinum bands, diamond eternity rings, the Etoile and the Novo, the Legacy. These are pieces where the stone is most of the price and the metal is the rest, and buying them secondhand is where the saving gets large in absolute terms rather than in percentage terms. A diamond does not wear. It is the hardest thing you will own, and a stone that has been on a hand for a decade is physically the same stone. What you should check is the setting rather than the diamond, since prongs do wear and a loose stone is the one failure mode that costs real money. Where possible, buy pieces that come with their original documentation, and note that some listings here include the certificate and the box. That paperwork is worth more on a diamond piece than it is on anything else in jewelry.

Secondhand Tiffany splits cleanly into two markets and they suit different buyers. If you want the name and a piece you can wear without thinking, buy sterling silver or a Peretti or Picasso design from the lower band, accept that it will tarnish and that a cloth fixes it, and spend a few hundred dollars. If you are buying a diamond piece, the secondhand saving is much larger in dollar terms and the diamond itself is unaffected by previous wear, so the only real inspection is the setting and the paperwork. If you take one thing away, let it be that on a silver piece you are checking for scratches and on a diamond piece you are checking the prongs, and confusing the two is how people buy the wrong thing carefully.