Wondering how to calculate the value of my jewelry or your resale jewelry value? What is the pre-owned value of my Jewelry?
Resale jewelry value is probably the number question we get on a daily basis in our industry. The pre-owned value of jewelry and watches is often confused with the appraised value. Appraisals are typically used for insurance purposes and full retail replacement of your valuables as if they were lost or damaged. Jewelry items such as Diamond Rings-Bracelets-Necklaces-Earrings and other manufactured Jewelry items take the biggest deprecation hit. The biggest reason for this is the cost of design-manufacturing and retailing these items. A single piece of jewelry starts as raw gold and raw diamonds. Gold has to be refined before it can be used to build a piece of jewelry, a diamond has to be mined from the earth and then cut into a shape and then polished. All of these processes are very time consuming and very costly. Once that the gold is refined and the diamond is mined, cut and polished we are now ready to design a piece of jewelry. After the piece is designed then it’s ready to go to the jeweler for manufacturing. So as you can see from what I’ve just described there’s a lot that goes into making a piece of jewelry and the piece passes through a lot of hands and at every stop there’s a markup of at least two times. The true pre-owned value of most jewelry is 1/3rd of the original retail price.
Fine watches are a different story. A fine watch if kept in good condition and all original paperwork is also kept the depreciation curve is not as dramatic. Some watches will actually increase in value. Watches are much easier to research and determine the true pre-owned value because there are many websites that will give you the pre-owned value of your fine watch. Just remember to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and think about what you would expect if you were looking to purchase a pre-owned fine watch or piece of jewelry.