What I bought at America's Largest Flea Market (with photos)

Belated Brimfield haul + search terms for shopping at home.

Brimfield is the shopping highlight of the year for me. The largest outdoor flea market in North America happens three times a year, but the best edition is in May. If you’re interested in a guide, I wrote one here. Endless fields in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts are filled to the proverbial brim with rare antiques, junk, oddly satisfying old stuff and an ocean of jewelry from every era. Last year, I wrote about the jewelry I scooped up for Vogue. Every time I go, I end up buying a lot, simply because there are so many great pieces that can’t be found anywhere else. And also, buying in bulk also yields more discounts.

Below are ~40 pieces I decided to keep for my personal collection, along with the search terms I recommend in case you want to shop them at home. I’ve organized the list by most normal to progressively niche and deranged. And I’ve also included some caustic, unretouched photos that I didn’t have time to edit (working on two more books at the moment…) on my table with glue stains!

In case you missed it, I also listed some of my Brimfield finds for sale on Dollchunk Bazaar, the vintage section of my jewelry brand Dollchunk.

My official 2025 Brimfield Haul…

Massive, chunky sterling silver jewelry

I’ve been really into big, thick, weirdly good sterling silver jewelry. Not just the little bangles or small things. I’m talking: heavyweight masterpieces that are un-Google-able. I’ve been manifesting these kinds of pieces for a while because they’re quite hard to find, and when shopping online, sometimes sellers don’t list the weight (a crucial detail for these kinds of pieces). But I came across a couple of them at Brimfield, including one huge brutalist style collar with grapes (yes!) and another sculptural, face-like, tree-shaped ring. I’m still in the process of researching both but drop a comment if you know anything about either one of them.

This year, I also noticed a lot of vendors selling sterling jewelry by the weight ($1.70 - $2/ gram on average); I scooped up a pile of the vintage sterling bangles shown below. With gold at an all-time high, I didn’t think the prices were good for gold fine jewelry at Brimfield this year but silver is a great alternative and serves a different purpose than costume jewelry (which I obviously also love).

I also picked up a big filigree flower brooch. And a huge, hulking peridot ring mounted in a sculptural sterling basket-like setting. I love a comically large gemstone!!!!

Search terms: huge sterling collar, vintage studio sterling, vintage chunky sterling, huge sterling peridot ring