About Us

We ask that you bring whatever paperwork you may have that relates to the jewelry. Grading Reports from GIA or another reputable laboratory are the most valuable to us since they will have the exact weight and dimensions for the primary stone. We don’t remove stones from their settings and have to rely on volumetric calculations to estimate the carat weight of stones. Other paperwork (old appraisals, receipts, etc.) can be scanned and included as an appendix to your report if you wish. We ask that you bring the documents with you so we can discuss differences between our examination and grading and previous graders’ opinions if there are significant differences.

When you arrive at your appointment, we’ll do a brief preliminary examination and provide you with our initial estimate of the fee for the service you’re requesting. As stated in our Service Agreement, the fee is an estimate that rarely changes and you’ll have to approve the change if it needs to be higher because of some unforeseen change in the scope of work. An example in which the fee would increase might be if your blue sapphire from the early 1900’s needs to be tested to verify suspected Kashmir origin. The research time for valuation of a Kashmir sapphire would be substantially more than for a stone of un-specified origin.

If you agree to the fee estimate, we’ll complete the information on the Service Agreement, point out any potential condition issues or problems with the jewelry, photograph and describe it on the Service Agreement. We each keep a copy of the Service Agreement and you are free to leave.

The jewelry must be very thoroughly cleaned before we can begin our examination. We use an ultrasonic cleaner, toothbrush and steamer to try to make the jewelry as pristine as possible. This can take hours in some cases. The good news is that your jewelry will be very clean and sparkly when it’s returned to you. The bad news is that it makes "while you wait" appointments very difficult to schedule.

Once the jewelry is clean, we begin the process of testing metals and stones, measuring every stone (even the really tiny ones), calculating or estimating carat weights, color grading, clarity grading and assessing the quality of cutting for every stone. Center diamonds are either photomicrographed or the inclusions plotted. Round diamonds over or near a carat go through an extensive cut/proportion analysis to arrive at the estimated GIA Cut Grade. We take digital photographs of each piece of jewelry from multiple angles. The process is time consuming and can take over an hour for each piece of jewelry. Some pieces of jewelry, for instance those with many small stones of different sizes and shapes can take several hours to complete.

After we’ve finished our examination, photography, and data collection you are free to pick up the jewelry. You can expect to pay us at that point. We do our best to return your jewelry to you the same day as your appointment; however, sometimes that isn’t possible. Be assured that we don’t want to hold your jewelry hostage for any longer than absolutely necessary and will get it back to you as quickly as we can.

The process of research, analysis and reconciliation of the data can take a while to complete. We will email the PDF file of the final report to you after we’ve finalized our value opinion, edited the photographs and compiled the report. You’ll receive the final report in a few days or a few weeks after you’ve received your jewelry. The time until you receive the report depends on the complexity of the assignment, number of pieces in the report and our workload at the time. Again, be assured that we will get the report to you as quickly as possible; but as you can probably tell, it takes time to do an appraisal correctly and well.