Forget Visa. A California jewelry boutique is now accepting sea glass as payment — and they’re going viral because of it.
Betty Belts, in Ventura, CA — a famed beach town 60 miles north of Los Angeles — has long offered a Sea Glass Trade program, accepting genuine, ocean-tumbled sea glass as store credit toward finished jewelry. But a recent TikTok video racked up more than 500,000 views and a CBS Los Angeles segment followed, and suddenly the whole country wanted to know more about what the store calls “Mermaid Money.”
Donna von Hoesslin
The store has a full valuation system for sea glass exchanges — and owner Donna von Hoesslin has thought it through carefully. Rare colors like red, pink, purple, and cobalt blue command the highest trade value. Common colors like green, white, and brown fetch less. All glass must be genuine — found by hand on the beach, tumbled only by the ocean, never artificially. Bring in your sea glass and Betty Belts will assess its value. If you trade sea glass for store credit, you get three times that amount to spend in the shop. If you want cash instead, you get the assessed base value only.
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Collectors can bring their haul to the Ventura shop or mail it in from anywhere. Betty Belts has built an international community of beachcombers over the years.
“I think it just struck a nerve with people, this alternative economy,” von Hoesslin told CBS Los Angeles.
It makes sense that it did. Von Hoesslin has been building her business around sea glass for years — the store’s jewelry is crafted from genuine ocean-found glass, handcrafted in sterling silver in Bali. Accepting it as currency isn’t a marketing move. It’s just how she’s always done business.
For jewelers interested in the idea of alternative payments, half a million TikTok views suggest the concept has legs. The sea glass is taken. But what could your store accept in trade — Montana sapphires, fresh Maine lobster, a jar of Vermont maple syrup?
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