How I coped with lockdown by collecting charms!

I first discovered Pandora in 2013 when I saw a colleague of mine wearing a beautiful black rose ring and she told me it was from a brand called Pandora. Thus began my journey of visiting my first Pandora store in Kuala Lumpur but much to my disappointment, the Black Onyx Ring was discontinued. I walked away with a birthstone ring.

After my first purchase, I did purchase some charms and a bracelet and subsequently added a few charms over the years. In late 2019, when the Harry Potter collection hit the stores, I was stoked and quickly added the Hogwarts Express and the castle charm, I did however feel that my bracelet was lacking something.

Fast forward to 2020, when the pandemic hit the world and Malaysia entered full lock down in March 2020, I found that there was very little to look forward. I stumbled upon a few YouTube videos as I was trying to think of how I can improve my Harry Potter bracelet. I discovered so many beautiful designs by Pandora sisters. This is when I become really passionate about collecting charms and started discovering many vintage charms. At this point, I only had 19 pieces from Pandora.

As soon as the stores opened up in mid 2020 again, I started expanding my collection with the next Harry Potter Collection where I added the Deathly Hallows, The Hogwarts Letter and Gryffindor dangle. We didn’t have Pandora 20 charms until August and I only managed to get the Sep, Nov & Dec Pandora 20 charms. My collection doubled up to 40+ at this point. 

I found it to be a creative processes researching about old collections from MoraPandora  Collections | Mora Pandora (morapandorablog.com)  and TheArtOfPandora PANDORA Collections | The Art of Pandora | More than just a Pandora Blog.

Some of the activities I was doing during lockdown is to create an inventory on Excel of all my pandora charms with the date of purchase, which collection it is from, the SKU# and  how much I bought it for. This was helpful to keep track of spending and also it showed of pricing patterns. 

I didn’t know much about Pandora sales and promotions prior to this. I also started writing about what it meant to me. This made me give a lot of thought to what I was collecting and what I wanted to add. I also was doodling design concepts.

You can follow me on instagram @charmstellastory.
Thanks for reading x