Is this a 12 strand pre pearl culture era necklace?

[Xpearlnoob1]

This is interesting. I recently acquired some of my grandmother's old fashion jewelry -- someone was really interested in buying it, which I thought was odd. No gold, no precious stones. Now I will take another look!

When Mae West passed away and her jewelry was auctioned, people were surprised to discover than some of the largest diamonds were fake. Mae had quietly sold the real diamonds to support the war effort (WWII). This actually made the jewelry more valuable.

Antique and vintage costume jewelry can be extremely valuable. Look for signatures or makers marks. If you can't find a signature of the maker be careful because a lot of valuable unsigned costume jewelry will have subtle characteristics that will allow people to identify who made it and when. There are a lot of books on the subject so you might want to look into that. It's literally a treasure hunt out out there these days because so many people either assume fashion jewelry is not valuable or that the makers + age of unsigned jewelry can't be determined. I learned this the hard way, good luck to you.