Shipwreck Beads

WOW LETS ALL GET A DEAL WITH SHIPWRECK BEADS
THEY ARE GREAT!
GREAT GEMSTONES ARE GRADED! ABC

Dealing with Shipwreck for at least 8 years, they were always a reliable, friendly site with a huge supply of products. Sadly, it's turned into a site that has more "unavailable at this time" products than in stock items!
Although the consumer is generally alerted to the "out of stock" status, it is not uncommon for the website to list an item as "in stock", only to have it not included in your order because they've run out it. I called customer service at one point to ask if they were going out of business, they assured me that was not the case. Another pandemic casualty or just very poor website management?

If you love doing seed bead work, you know that there are many places to get seed beads by the hank. If you want those beads to be consistent... it's always best to stick with the same company when buying beads, or you run into trouble. A size #11 at one site, wont be the same size at another. One thing I've learned over the many years I've been doing seed bead work is this... if you buy cheap beads, you get cheap beads. I've been buying from Shipwreck Beads for many years now. Their prices are great. They ship quickly and I've never had a problem with my purchases. Sometimes they might be out of a certain opaque color because of huge demands. The site will let you know this before you purchase. I start looking at ordering before I get low, to prevent my running out of that color because of stocking. I've tried the expensive beads that were really uniform, but for Native American Style Seed Bead Work, being too perfect takes away from the artwork. Of all the places I've gotten beads from... I've chosen this site for my needs. Many people have purchased my leather and bead work over the years. When they ask me where I get my beads... I tell them, "at Shipwreckedbeads.com."

Pre pandemic Shipwreck Beads had the best bead quality and uniformity. Was able to bead quickly without picking through beads. The pandemic caused a Czech bead shortage resulting in beads being on back order. Once beads became available again, they are half the height they were before back order, making for sloppy beadwork that is not uniform. Interfacing with beads pre back order is problematic because they are two different heights and they don't lay flat next to seed beads pre pandemic and back order. It looks like the Czech beadmaker cut them shorter to increase the number of beads made to meet demands. While understandable, it cuts the number of usable beads significantly (more than half are unusable for current projects), and greatly increases work time as you have to pick through beads to find one that's the correct height. No idea whether bead height will ever return to former height in the future. Any beads you had prior to back order will not fit with these shorter beads. Very disappointing a previously great company now has sub par quality beads after many years of selling a uniform high quality bead. Representative of the company did not acknowledge awareness of the newer shorter beads. Bead and shop accordingly!

This website belongs to an authorized dealer of Preciosa Ornela seed beads, though I have not personally done any transactions or business with them they seem to have a very complete selection of Preciosa Ornela's beads and a selection of tribal, rare, hard to find beads in their shop. Another section of the website carries books, stringing materials, and findings. Worth a perusal.

packers or webmaster needs to learn the actual names of the beads, so people know what they're getting. It is not worth sending one bag of beads back when you thought you were getting something else. I see this as quality control gone awry. Caring about customers means actually doing the work to learn about what you're selling. I won't buy Czech beads here anymore.