Private Estate Sale Collections

Join us for our fabulous Estate Sale Collection Events! They are pretty incredible. These special events were created for our community of long time customers of The Bead Factory - our local retail bead store in Tacoma, WA for almost 30 years! This is a special way we continue to celebrate our love for jewelry making & keep our long time community connected. These special events are often featured online but occasionally held LIVE locally & in person! Access is only available to our previous Tacoma Bead Factory customer's & community. If that includes you, but not receiving our emails? Please register in the "Subscribe" section on the home page. Or email me directly at modernjewelrycreators@gmail.com & I will get you signed up so you don't miss a thing!

We are excited to announce the launch of our new online platform "Jewelry Maker's Marketplace" in the fall of 2025. This online community will be open to anyone who wants to buy for, sell from, (or both) their own personal collection of jewelry making supplies. This vetted community can buy & sell with each other. I'll be right there to provide assistance & ongoing education among Members. We'll use the guidelines & criteria I've developed for our current Estate Sales. The primary focus is having access to a marketplace where you can find all the high quality, older, rare, or vintage specialty items that are hiding in everyone's stash and no longer available today!  Join our email list from the home page for all the details & updates!

This service came about in 2017 after a beloved customer had passed and her daughter reached out to me. She was overwhelmed, knew her mother had spent a small fortune but didn't know what to do, so she asked for my help. This privilege allowed me to honor Ursula, and also helped my own grief at the time. All of these pieces that I once bought for my shop are like these little sparkling place holders in time. To work with them again was very "full circle".

I've been in the jewelry industry for over 3 decades starting at Nordstrom in the late 1980's. We opened The Bead Factory in Tacoma in 1992. Over the last 30 years, I've bought & sold just about every kind of bead & bauble out there. Our shop mainly focused on Gemstones, Pearls, high end specialty beads & precious metals. I have had the joy & privilege of building an amazing community of jewelry makers & friends. Now, after all of these years, they have very large personal collections of their own!   

People are interested in selling some or all of these collections for many reasons. Sometimes the collector has passed, and a family member reaches out.  But more often, there are physical limitations that has made jewelry making difficult, or perhaps they are downsizing, or just moved on to other hobbies.  There can be a point where our collections have lived in boxes, bags or drawers unused for way too long. This is where we start to wonder what we're ever going to do with all of it, do we want our family to deal with it, do they know how?  Because of our long-time relationship within this community, we (you & I) are in a unique position to keep your cherished collection within this same community - the one that loves it as much as you do! So whether this is something you want me to do for you, or you decide to check out our new Marketplace (to buy or sell) it is a pretty neat opportunity. Kind of like trading the things you haven't used for the items you wish you could find again!

So as of right now (September 2025) I am still accepting a limited number of collections to sell. That's because I will be doing in person events with those collections for the next few months while also launching the Jewelry Maker's Marketplace. If you are interested please email me directly at modernjewelrycreators@gmail.com or text me at 253-441-6163 with any questions and we'll go from there. To be updated on these in person events & the new launch, make sure you are on our email list by filling out your email on the home page under "subscribe". 

We're still sparkling brightly.....because of the Star we are!

Viki Lareau