If you’re an Erstwilder brooch fan, you’ve probably noticed that they’ve been growing in popularity! Many of their new releases sell out within SECONDS. So how can you buy your favourite brooches before they quickly disappear?

I’ve only been an Erstwilder broochie for a year, and the above photo doesn’t include three orders that are still in the mail, but even as a newbie I’ve never missed anything I’ve wanted on release day so I thought I’d share what’s worked for me.

With a little preparation–and speed–I’ve bought everything I’ve wanted including from the ever-so-popular Pete Cromer release. Since I see a lot of people have been struggling, I thought I’d share a few of my tips!

12+ Erswilder Brooch Buying Tips

1. Know the release time and double check it for your timezone! Check the counter they put on their website and triple check that you know the time for your location.

2. Know what you want to order and have your list ready. There will be no time to ponder this. Be ready!

3. Login to your account or create an account and login well in advance. I’m always at my computer at least 20 minutes early. Make sure that your address and all of the details are correct for your account.

4. Use a computer, not a phone. It’s possible to checkout quickly on a phone I guess but I would personally never trust it.

5. Do a couple of test checkouts to practice your speed. Try adding some items to your cart so you know what the process will be and take the checkout right to the last step when it asks for payment so that you’ll know what to expect.

6. If you’re going to apply any points to your order, you can prepare this in advance in your test checkout and have the code copied to your clipboard as a backup in the unlikely event that your points coupon code disappears. (I tested this several times and it never disappeared once I’d applied the coupon early, but better to be safe.)

7. Use the “add to bag” button that appears right below each item. Don’t slow down by opening up the individual product page. If you’ll be buying more than one item then you can increase the number to 2 in the sidebar that appears, which shows the items in your cart. You have to close the sidebar before you can continue shopping. (*When I inquired about limits in late 2020, they said you were allowed to buy up to two of the same item for you and a friend. This may have increased or may only be limited for certain collections.)

8. Know your payment method. Even though my payment method is usually automatically populated because I usually use Google Pay, on the last release that didn’t work for some reason so I quickly had to switch to Paypal or populating my credit card information. I decided in a split second that Paypal would be faster so I went with that. But have your payment options ready to go. Items *do* disappear from people’s carts even at this late stage of checkout so you must be speedy and prepared.

9. Have a stockist website (or two or three) open on your computer in separate tabs as backup. If for any reason you can’t get what you want from Erstwilder, immediately flip over to the stockist website. Follow all the same steps to prepare yourself on the stockist websites; login and familiarize yourself with their checkout process so that you’ll be able to be super speedy.

10. Go to the  NEW collections page and start watching the timer. Like a hawk. Don’t get distracted! Be ready to refresh the page as soon as it’s time.

11. When the items start to appear, you’ll have no idea what order they will appear in so it can be a bit of a panic. In the last release, the items actually pushed on to two pages because the essentials (earrings) ended up showing in the middle of the collection. Try to keep your cool but be quick. Click add to bag for each and as soon as the sidebar for your cart appears, you’ll need to “x” it to close it so that you can add the next item. It’s seriously always an adrenaline rush but with practice and preparation, you can do it!

12. Keep going! If anything disappears from your cart, which has happened to other people, don’t lose the opportunity to buy the others. Stay focused. Keep going through your checkout as quickly as possible. Then turn to the stockist websites you’ve had ready to grab what you missed.

If you still couldn’t get what you wanted, make sure you’ve joined all of the many Erstwilder groups on Facebook that I’ve linked to above. As people’s orders start to arrive, sometimes people find that they are not as in love with an item as they thought they were. These groups are a good place to try to find your DISO (desperately in search of) items.

eBay Tips

As I said before, try all of the Erstwilder swap and sell groups on Facebook before turning to eBay. But as a last resort, you might choose to use eBay, or evilbay as many broochies call it, to snag your most wanted items. If you aren’t familiar with eBay auctions, here are my tips:

a) My first tip is probably obvious but I’ll say it anyways: Never ever bid on an item before the end of an auction. You’ll just drive the price up.

b) Use a bidnapper program. You will never win a popular auction manually. If it’s an in-demand item, like many popular Erstwilder items, you must use a bidnapper. These programs automatically do super speedy bidding within the last 60 seconds of an auction so if you’ve ever lost something in an auction at the very last second, you have almost certainly lost to a bidnapper program. This is the one I use but I’m sure there are many of them.

Thanks for reading!

I think these are all of my tips for the moment but if I think of anything else, I’ll update this!

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any tips I’ve missed.