Vintage Swarovski Crystal Bead Info - Part 1

When selling vintage the first question I usually hear is "How old are these"? One of the easiest types of beads to date accurately are Swarovski crystal beads, especially if they are still in their original packaging. There's a lot of incorrect information floating around so I would like to offer some factual information to help clear it up.

If I have done this correctly (I'm still pretty blog-challenged) you should be able to click on the chart at the right to see it full sized. It's a conversion chart of old and new Swarovski article numbers (basically a style number) next to a line drawing of the bead. Now the trick is to know when the numbers were changed. In 1968 the numbers were converted to 4 digits so you know that if the 2 or 3 digit number is printed on the package or box they were made prior to then.

More to come...