"They sometimes say a celebrity used to wear this or that piece of jewelry, but it's totally ridiculous." Liu says its wrong to try and make a quick buck out of vintage jewelry, as she believes this destroys the charm of the item and the process.

"It should be a long term business," she says. Liu's customers are usually aged around 30 and have a middle- to high-level income.

"They have been buying luxury brands and are now searching for something distinctive." Liu says she sells about 200 items a month on average and adds that Taiwan dealers are now becoming interested in her wares.

Yu Hsiao Wei, 32, has been collecting vintage jewelry for more than eight years and started her online business on Taobao.com a year ago.

She prefers vintage collections from the US and Europe that have a classic style. "Some of them were produced as early as the 1920s," Yu says.

She got interested in vintage jewelry about nine years ago, when she lost a beautiful blue enamel necklace. "I wanted to find another same piece and this is how I started out.

"Business was tough to begin with but the entire environment changed after six months. It is a bit weird but the business suddenly became very popular on the mainland last year."

Yu sells about 100 items of vintage jewelry a month, with each piece ranging in price from 1,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan.

To price a piece of vintage jewelry is difficult, she says, as the market is chaotic, even overseas. The price generally depends on the year it was produced, the brand and its condition. Yet, even two identical vintage items of jewelry can fetch different prices.

"I used to buy two items that you couldn't tell apart. I was very lucky to buy the first one at a low price, and when I found the second one I bought it without hesitation in a market price - much higher than the first one," Yu says.

Contemporary branded jewelry on the other hand is fairly transparent when it comes to pricing, as it will depend on the materials used and the design.

Yu says the best part of selling vintage jewelry is that she can meet people with the same interest and adds she has more than 300 regular customers, mainly from Shanghai and Beijing.

"I cannot say exactly why I love to wear vintage jewelry," says 30-year-old Zhang Hong, an enthusiastic buyer of