Coro Jewelry: How to Identify, Date, and Value It

Coro made costume jewelry in enormous quantities for most of the 20th century, so the honest starting point is that most Coro is affordable. The marks tell you which of its lines a piece came from and roughly when, and a handful of designs (complete Duettes, 1940s sterling, tremblers, and Lucite-bellied figurals) are worth looking for.

A short history

Emanuel Cohn and Carl Rosenberger started their New York business around 1901. The CORO trademark itself dates to 1919 (you’ll sometimes read 1943, but that’s when the company formally renamed itself Coro, Inc.). Production centered on a large factory in Providence, Rhode Island, and Coro is widely described as the biggest costume jewelry maker of its era.

Much of its design patent output is in the name of Adolph Katz, who joined in 1924 and became design director. How much he designed himself is disputed: the family of designer Gene Verrecchia, who worked at Coro for about three decades, credits many of those designs to him. The family sold a controlling stake in 1969, and US operations had closed by 1979, though Coro’s Canadian business carried on for years afterward.

Coro, Corocraft, and Vendome

Coro sold several lines at different price points, and the mark tells you which one you have:

These are collectors’ date ranges, and sources disagree at the edges (when Vendome ended, for example). Our vintage costume jewelry marks guide covers the general rules, like the © that appears from the mid-1950s.

The Coro Duette

A Duette is a brooch frame holding two matching dress clips, so you can wear it as one brooch or as a pair of clips. The mechanism was patented by Paris jeweler Gaston Candas (US patent 1,798,867, granted March 31, 1931), and Coro, which had registered the Duette name in 1929, made it famous. Duettes were made through the 1930s and 1940s, and “duette” is now used loosely for any double-clip brooch, including Trifari’s rival “Clip-Mate.”

A Duette is worth most complete: the frame plus both original clips, matching, with working springs. A lone clip or an empty frame is worth a fraction of the set.

What collectors look for

• Complete Duettes, especially figurals (birds, animals, sea creatures) and floral designs.
• Tremblers, where flowers or birds sit on tiny springs and quiver as you move (the “Quivering Camellias” Duette is a well-known example).
• Corocraft sterling from the 1940s, often vermeil.
• “Jelly belly” figurals with a clear Lucite center, the same style Trifari made famous.

What Coro sells for

Here are completed auction sales from Ripley Auctions, a specialist in vintage costume jewelry. They’re hammer prices, before the buyer’s premium:

• An owl fur-clip Duette: $25 (2005).
• A Corocraft pastel floral Duette: $170 (2016).
• A “Quivering Camellias” trembler Duette with earrings: $350 (2022).
• A Corocraft sterling “jelly belly” mallard: $250 (2018).
• A Corocraft sterling vermeil “jelly belly” parrot: $700 (2016).

For comparison, a 2019 Antiques Roadshow appraisal (not a sale) put a pair of Coro Duette seahorse clips from about 1945 at $800 to $1,000 at auction, even with the frame missing. Everyday Coro brooches, earrings, and necklaces generally sell for much less than any of these. To price yours, look up completed sales of the same design; our guide to whether vintage costume jewelry is worth anything shows how.

Buying or selling Coro

If you’re selling, photograph the mark close up and state it exactly (“Corocraft Sterling,” “Coro Duette Pat. No. 1798867”). For a Duette, show it assembled and the clips separately. If you’re shopping, browse Coro on StillSparkly or the brooch collection, where most Coro ends up.