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Updating your jewelry valuations for your jewelry insurance policies

It is extremely important to have your special pieces of jewelry properly insured in case the worst happens and you suffer a loss. Jewelry pieces are often highly sentimental items that make loss exceptionally painful to bear, especially as a result of crime. So the last thing you want to happen is to find out you’re underinsured and can’t replace what you’ve lost at current market prices. Since the prices of metals and stones fluctuate all the time, how do you revalue your jewelry each year for the annual policy renewal, whether it’s for a specialized jewelry insurance policy or a general home goods policy? with a section to secure jewelry?

The easiest and most accurate way to update your jewelry valuations is to pay for a professional annual jewelry revaluation. However, jewelry appraisals don’t come cheap, with prices typically charged at 1-2% of the jewelry’s total value. With jewelery prices rising as a result of commodity price rises, this pricing method automatically means that appraisal charges have risen considerably in recent years. Many people do not want to pay for a professional jewelry appraisal every year. So how do you go about estimating an updated value for your jewelry for insurance policy purposes?

The first thing you should do is talk to your insurance company. You may be required to have your jewelry professionally revalued each year. If this is the case, then you have no choice but to get a professional appraisal annually. However, it will be worth searching to see if you can find a jeweler who will make the first initial charge and then charge a nominal amount for the annual update.

After talking to your insurance company and discovering that they don’t require a professional annual appraisal, you go ahead and decide to make your own estimates. First, she contacts the insurance company again and asks if they have a general rule for applying percentage changes to pieces of jewelry you might wear. However, even if they do, it’s reassuring to confirm their number with your own calculations. If you have gold jewelry, then the best way to do this is to take the price you paid for the jewelry, use the Internet to find out the percentage change in the price of gold since you bought the item, and apply that figure to the price you paid for it. . This would also apply to items made in silver. Gold and silver prices are widely available on the Internet. Try to use metal prices denominated in your own currency. If you were a UK resident, but used US dollar metal prices, then you would not be including the effect of exchange rate movements between the US dollar and the pound sterling. Make sure you don’t simply apply the price per gram to your item as this would significantly understate the value of your item as it would ignore the value of the piece over and above the value of the raw material.

However, what do you do if your piece of jewelry contains diamonds as well as metal, such as a princess-cut solitaire diamond engagement ring? The surest way to insure your pieces is always through a professional appraisal, but if you’re dead set on going the do-it-yourself route, then you need to have a benchmark that divides the value of the metal and the value. of diamonds This would be virtually impossible to do yourself as a layman and only a professional jewelry appraiser could give you this information. So your strategy might be to ask for this information when purchasing the item, but don’t expect light jewelry sales assistants to know this information. You will only get this type of information from a ‘proper’ jeweler with many years of experience in the industry. Alternatively, request a professional jewelry appraisal and request a division of the appraisal into diamond value and metal value. Once you have your reference point, search the internet for “diamond prices” and calculate a percentage movement in diamond prices and a percentage movement in metal prices and apply the values ​​to your piece.

Whether you are revaluing gold jewelry or diamond-set jewelry, if you find that the value of your piece has dropped, it would be safest to keep the value fixed or constant for insurance purposes, since jewelry retailers are generally reluctant to reduce their prices. A small overvaluation of your jewelry for insurance purposes is considerably safer than an undervaluation.

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