Jewellery is the most valued item in most homes, especially for women. People often purchase them, receive them as gifts, and pass them down to the next generation as assets. These assets are called ‘heirlooms’, and usually the value or the total worth of these assets is unknown.
If you acquired the jewellery using methods other than purchasing it yourself, there is a high likelihood that you will want to change the design or at least have it repaired. To ensure the safety of your assets, you may have also obtained a valuation and insurance for them. Getting the jewellery repaired raises a simple question: will the repairs impact the previous valuation? To answer this question succinctly, the response is undoubtedly yes.
If you’ve ever had your ring resized, a stone replaced, or worn claws rebuilt, your old insurance paperwork may already be inaccurate, and therefore, to have the accurate valuation and insurance, you need to get the valuation done again, followed by the insurance.
Let’s walk through why jewellery repairs can change your insurance valuation and what you must do to ensure that it remains accurate, which helps you claim the real amount in unfortunate circumstances.
Why Your Insurance Valuation Isn’t “One and Done”?
Getting a jewellery valuation is something that is extremely essential in today’s time. However, contrary to what many people believe, obtaining a jewellery appraisal is not a one-time event; the value does not remain constant for a lifetime. Once your valuation is done, various parameters determine the value of a piece of jewellery. But with the passage of time, the value of the precious metals and gemstones changes, and this leads to a significant change in the worth of the jewellery. Apart from these factors, there are several others that impact the change in the overall value of the jewellery, and a few reasons are listed below.
- The condition of your jewellery the day it was assessed.
- The materials used
- Current market prices for metals and gemstones
- The craftsmanship required to replace it
How Jewellery Repair Can Change the Value of Your Jewellery?
In addition to the reasons mentioned earlier, several other factors also affect the current value of jewellery, with jewellery repair being the most significant; this repair is typically performed at a jewellery shop after many years. This repair causes a huge change in the jewellery’s value.
1. Replacing or upgrading stones is a significant factor
As the jewellery ages or undergoes continuous use, the likelihood of the gemstones wearing out increases. In such cases, a diamond or gemstone embedded in the jewellery is replaced—especially a better-quality one. Once a replacement is made, the value of your jewellery changes significantly because the current worth of the new gemstone is added to it. This is true in most cases, even with familiar gemstones. There are several factors that are considered to evaluate the correct worth of the jewellery, and a few such features taken into account have been listed below.
- Carat weight
- Colour
- Clarity
- Cut
2. Re-Shanking or Re-Tipping
When the band or shank of the jewellery, for example, a ring, is made again, it adds to the precious metal, and even if new claws are added around the gemstone to secure it, a significant amount of metal is used. All this leads to an increase in the value of the jewellery, and the reasons for the increase have been listed below.
That means:
- Increased gold or platinum weight
- More labour involved in a replacement
- Higher overall replacement value
Your original jewellery valuation probably doesn’t reflect this.
3. Ring Resizing
Resizing again is something that appears to be an extremely small change brought about in the jewellery, but it is not so small a change. Even in the process of simply resizing, the amount of the metal changes, and this leads to a drastic change in the overall worth of the jewellery.
Summing Up
To sum up, there are a number of things that impact the worth of the jewellery, and it therefore becomes extremely important to ensure that you get the right jewellery valuations done again at the earliest so that you have a clear idea about the current value of your jewellery, and accordingly, you can get the insurance bought too.
