selling good jewellery

[NewName73]

Can anyone tell me how to go about selling some decent jewellery that I have been given, but will never wear?

Auction?
Jeweller?

Where would I get the best price?

Auction house. Some have special jewellery & silver sales which would be better than putting it in a general sale. Shop round at ones near you as the commiss can vary quite a bit, they have websites which will tell you this & give dates of sales & dayswhen you can take things in for valuation which is free if you agree to sell. Best to set a reserve on good things.

Sorry, commission not comiss.

Thanks Darklane. Is it worth taking it to one in London, or will a local one do?

Jewellery is not a known brand, like Cartier or Tiffany, but good stones.

The big London auction houses will charge more commission but you might get more bids and therefore more profit - it really depends on the value of the jewellery though. Unless they're worth tends of thousands I'd probably just go with a decent local auctioneer. Have you had them valued (for sale rather than insurance)? Second hand jewellery tends to be worth a lot less than most people think.

Have just been looking at a local auction house sale results, and they seem very low compared with the insurance valuations I have been given!

Also I think some of the styles are very old fashioned.

Insurance values are very inflated so don’t expect to get that.
Most auction houses are online now for bids during the sale & of course there’s telephone bids so don’t worry about just appealing to the people who actually turn up to bid in person on the day. I wouldn’t go out of my way to use a big London house for that reason.

You say it’s old fashioned but antique jewellery gets better prices than late 20th century stuff as a rule.

I used to work in jewelry business.. you won't get anything near the insurance values... stones need to be high grade to get good price and 99% of stones are poor.... try to sell private or eBay.. auctions will take 20% min off sale price.

I'd take it to a local jeweller so you have a ball park figure for what it's worth. Set a reserve price so you don't end up letting it go for next to nothing. A lot comes down to style and what's popular. If someone wants it as a wearable or collectable piece then obviously it's worth more than something to be disassembled and smelted down.

The rule of thumb for probate is that the insurance value is 3xthe second hand value. Then you'll need to take off commission, catalogue fees, unpaid fees etc. It doesn't usually work out very lucrative. Is there anyone in the family who would wear it or is selling definitely the best route for you?

Insurance value is for having to buy again potentially new. Selling on eBay, to a shop or auction is, in the main, for dealers to re-sell.

Take to an auction house jewellery specialist and they will give you a realistic idea of the price you might achieve.

Chiswick Auction house, Mallams in Oxford, Dreweatts in Newbury all good.

I sold a ring that had a £3k insurance value at auction and made £1k.

Thanks everyone, this is all very helpful.

Newbury is not far from me and I did look at the Dreweatts website yesterday.

I would like to sell as we need the money. Most of it was bought in the 1970s & 80s so not lovely antiques, just looks 'wrong' now. But I was advised when they were valued for insurance that the stones were high quality. Useful to know that I can only expect to achieve about 1/3 of the insurance values.

I've always had good experiences with Dreweatts. Hope you get on well.

Sounds like there's much more fun stuff you can be spending the money on!

I ebayed some excellent quality diamond jewellery and got about half of the valuation price, which was disappointing but not surprising. My pieces were actually bought by a jeweller, I suspect they just wanted the diamonds and wouldn't have sold them on as they were.