[Jewelry making - Article 00116] - Re: [Orchid] How Appraisals Work

[Daniel Spirer]

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Yath,

    I don't know what responsibility appraisers have in Sri Lanka, but
    here in the States if you write an appraisal and sign your name to
    it you have just signed a legal document. This is a far larger
    commitment than someone who verbally quotes to someone else a price
    to duplicate a piece. There are also accepted methodological ways of
    establishing prices for appraisals in place in this country. (The
    fact that so many jewelers fail to follow them is moot, as they can
    be held legally responsible even if they don't know what they are
    doing.) 

    Showing a piece to another jeweler to get a price quote is 1)
    absolutely useless if you need a document for insurance purposes as
    insurers don't care what some jeweler verbally tells anyone 2)
    impractical for the general public to be expected to do 3) unreliable
    as while one jeweler may look at a piece and say "well I can
    duplicate that for $400 if I handbuild it" another will look it up in
    a catalog and say "well I can get that from manufacturer A and sell
    it to you for $200", yet another will look at the same catalog and
    say I can get it and sell it to you for $175" and another will say "I
    have a used item just like that in the back and I can sell it for
    $100" and then you can probably go on line and find yet another price
    from some firm that has no real store to work out of. Beyond that you
    have pieces in the marketplace that are branded and carry a premium
    price if they came from the original source and it doesn't matter
    what anyone else says they can make a piece for. On top of that,
    unless you are indicating some willingness to buy something it's rare
    that any of these people would give you something in writing, and
    certainly nothing that the insurance company is going to accept 

Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
daniel AT spirerjewelers.com
www.spirerjewelers.com

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