Girls' Accessories
Buy and sell girls’ accessories in Panama.
A first pair of gold studs, a set of beaded hair ornaments for a school folk dance, a wheeled school bag that made it through one year: the pieces that finish a girl’s outfit here run from a pack of clips to something a family keeps for a generation. Bows and headbands come in packs and change with her taste every year, so they turn over fast. The jewelry and the festival headdress are where the money sits. All of it appears new and pre-owned, often from families whose daughter has outgrown it, and the metal is worth settling with the seller before anything else.
Trembling hair ornaments, combs and a girl’s festival jewelry:
for a girl dancing in Panama’s national dress at a school presentation or a town festival, the headdress is the hardest part of the outfit to put together. The trembling ornaments are handmade on hairpins, either in pearls and beads or in the older fish-scale style, and each piece sits on a small coiled wire that makes it shiver as she moves. They come in pairs: one set covers the bun at the back, another sits over the ears, and smaller flowers fill the gaps. A child’s head takes fewer pairs than a grown woman’s. White ornaments go with the full gala dress and coloured ones with the simpler everyday version. The chains, combs and other pieces that go with a girl’s dress are usually gold-plated silver or costume metal, fine for an outfit she will outgrow in a year or two. The dress itself is in girls’ clothing.
Bows, headbands and the wheeled school bag:
everyday pieces are cheap and quick to replace, so buy them in bundles: bows, clips and headbands in her school colours. The bigger decision is the school bag. Wheels spare a small child’s back on a long, flat walk from the car, but a wheeled bag is a weight to drag up a staircase to a second-floor classroom. A shoulder backpack should sit above her hips with padded straps. For sunglasses, look for UV400 on the arm; a pair without it is a dress-up toy. Sandals and school shoes are listed under girls’ shoes.
Gold studs and the stamp behind the ear:
solid gold is stamped 10K or 417, 14K or 585, 18K or 750, and letters such as GP, GF or HGE after the number mean plated or filled, not solid. For a baby or a toddler, a screw back is the safer choice over a butterfly back, because it does not work loose against a pillow.
Hair ornaments and gold studs, new against used:
a handmade pair of pearl hair ornaments costs around $60 to $100 new, and a well-kept set holds its value because the work is in the wiring, not the materials. Gold baby studs start around $70 new in 10K and reach about $100 in 18K. A used solid pair keeps a good part of that, since the gold is still there; a plated pair is worth a few dollars.
Checking used hair ornaments, earrings and bags:
lay the ornaments out in their pairs and count them, then shake each one gently. A spring that has gone flat no longer trembles, loose pearls rattle on the wire, and the green thread wrapped round the stems unwinds with age. Fish scales crack and yellow if they were stored somewhere damp. On earrings, zoom in on the stamp with your phone and make sure the screw thread still grips and the backs are the originals. On a wheeled bag, extend and retract the handle several times, roll it across the floor and look at the seam where the straps meet the body.
Listing a full headdress or a pair of studs:
photograph the ornaments laid out in pairs on a dark cloth and say whether they are pearl or scale, white or coloured, how many pairs there are and whether any have been re-wired. For gold, show the stamp up close and give the karat and the back type. Group hair accessories into one listing by colour. Pieces her brother has finished with go in boys’ accessories. Many families pass a girl’s headdress to a younger cousin before they ever sell it, so a buyer coming to collect a set will want to see it pinned into a bun, trembling, before handing over the money.