Ever since I was a little girl with few personal possessions, I was fascinated with baubles. I thought them wonderful adornments. And I wished I could have some for myself. When my husband, for my fifteenth birthday gave me a gold ring set with a square-cut amethyst, I floated in air. He had a job bicycle-delivering orders for a local grocery and a pharmacy. Over the succeeding years he gave me a coin-silver bracelet with linked oriental coins, a silver chain with a silver mezuzah over a small flat piece of ivory-on-silver, and I thought myself well bedecked, wearing those items. Many years later I gave the ring to our daughter, and she lost the stone.

From time to time as our circumstances permitted I was able to own other pieces of jewellery, and I enjoyed them all, my fascination with jewellery has never dissipated. When we lived in Japan I was given pearls by my husband and I treasured them, too. We sent a string of pearls to our daughter back home, and she wore them everywhere until one day riding her bicycle she lost them.

Over the years I was introduced by a neighbour to the joys of eBay and the convenience of Pay Pal. From then on I would occasionally troll various dealers' offerings to find items that appealed to me and then bid for them. I learned how cutthroat women can be in jostling anonymously in the ether with one another for a favoured piece of jewellery and experienced some wins, some losses. But the opportunity was always there to go on to bidding for yet another piece of jewellery in the hopes of having the 'winning bid'.

I would then send some of the 'wins' to my daughter, and keep some of them for myself. Occasionally my granddaughter would agree to accept a piece of jewellery that found favour with her. I haven't been doing much of this lately. But then not long ago, out of curiosity I went looking again, and redicovered a new site that I had used on occasion, called Jewelexi, on eBay.

They featured a wide range of pieces, sterling silver worked into various designs and set with a multitude of semi-precious stones, and I was beyond intrigued. Many of the designs were not reflective of my taste; pedestrian, poorly realized, and obviously so to appeal to as large a range of potential buyers as possible. But a small proportion among the rings, broaches, necklaces, bracelets and pendants did appeal hugely to me.

At one time, anything ordered through the eBay site at Jewelexi came through the mail within a two-week time-frame, from the United States, for the jewellery made in India. Something has changed and now it takes about a month for anything from that site to arrive, and they are sent directly from Jaipur, India. A customs declaration accompanied the latest packet I received under this new system, painstakingly written out in the most perfect bankers' script.

The packet was delivered directly to the house by Canada Post, sending our two little dogs into a tizzy of barking, as the storm door was opened and the packet left between it and the front door for our retrieval.

Amber and silver pendants

Something else has changed. Whereas before, all items began at $.99 and were bid up from there, they now all have starting prices that run from $7.99, $8.99, $12.99, and so on. If no one bids up from your initial bid, your price for the item remains what the starting price was, and you're notified by email whether or not yours was the 'winning bid'. These items of jewellery are exquisite, their workmanship perfect, the constituent parts; silver and set stones genuine.

What they represent is astronomical value in a perfectly worked piece of art, at an affordable price. The shipping, lately, has been free of charge, although it can work out to about $10, and if more than one piece is bid on, they arrive together. Their acquisition goes a long way to satisfying my acquisitive longing for something bright and new and cheery.