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Unlike the classic charm bracelets, Italian charm bracelets are created entirely out of the individual links. Each link connects to the adjacent links making up the entire bracelet.
What should I look for when buying Italian charms?
There is a simple answer and a not so simple answer to this question.
The simple answer is that you should look for an established and well-recognized brand of merchandise from a reputable merchant. For example, such brands as Zoppini, Disney, or Nomination are all fine brands.
Unfortunately, the top brands come at a top price costing anywhere between $12 to $18 per each individual Italian charm link. While the price is justifiable for the small number of charms manufactured with solid gold; most of the time you're just paying for the brand name with no noticeable improvement in quality.
Since an average bracelet has about 18 links, you would be spending about $324 to complete your bracelet.
Your other option is to venture into the world of smaller brands to try to separate the good from the bad. Below I will tell you exactly how to do that.
Who sells Italian charms?
Trying to find good quality Italian charms at a good price can be frustrating, especially because the market is very fragmented and there's a wide variation in quality and price.
On the one hand, you have high volume sellers (let's call them distributors) who buy stock directly from importers and manufacturers and then move large quantities of product at a lower price.
On the other hand, you have resellers and retailers who purchase on the wholesale market and from other resellers. Generally, they offer a wider selection, but maintain smaller stock and have higher prices.
Somewhere in between you have a whole range of smaller operators and hobbyists.
If you really want great quality and great prices -- and who doesn't? -- you want to find a distributor who also sells retail. (Ok, I make no secret of the fact that we are one of those.)
Good Italian charms vs. bad Italian charms
Ok, let's say you found a distributor and they have great prices and good selection. How do you know that the Italian charms they sell are high quality?
Apart from the logo on the back (that might or might not mean anything), consider how their charms are made.
After selling over 500,000 charms, we can say with confidence that these are the top factors to consider:
The type of metal used for the charm
How the picture side (the "face") of a charm is attached to the base
How the "face" is protected from friction
The thickness of the metal used for the picture side
The quality of the spring mechanism inside the charm.
That last item used to be an issue, but these days it seems that nearly all manufacturers supply quality mechanisms.
Good Italian charms will follow these guidelines:
They are made of industry grade stainless steel (304 or 316)
Soldered attachment is generally better
Resin (or epoxy) is used to seal the enameled surface
The front of the charm is made of metal that is at least 0.4mm thick. You should be able to see that from the pictures. Really cheap charms look "flat" because instead of connecting a metal plate to the front of the charm, they push a part of surface of the charm out and then apply paint to it. Such charms are generally junk.
Italian charms we sell all follow the guidelines outlined above. We actually pay a little bit extra to have thicker metal and better coating. Thus, we have very few defective charms. For example, this year we've had none (zero) charms returned due to bad spring mechanisms.
