What To Do Before Selling Antique Jewelry

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When an older relative gives you some of their vintage jewelry that you aren’t fond of, it can be tricky to find a way to tell them that you’re not interested in it. You typically just accept it with a smile and put it in a drawer that’s full of other items you’ve gotten and will never touch. Even though parting with something like that might be difficult, we think it’s finally time for you to pull it out of storage and sell it. Before you do, though, be sure to look through these steps of what to do before selling antique jewelry.

Get It as Clean as Possible

Cleaning and polishing your jewelry properly is the most crucial step in this process. If it doesn’t look good, it’s not going to be worth as much as you would have hoped. Fortunately, there are plenty of at-home methods for doing this.

If you want to make sure the cleaning job gets done well, you’ll want to take it to a professional jeweler. They will likely have a rotary tumbler that can finish large masses of jewelry at a time. These have plenty of benefits for jewelers, but the time they save is the most important.

Find Some People Who Can Appraise Them

There are a couple of reasons why you should get your jewelry appraised by multiple people—the first one being the fact that appraisal isn’t a perfect art form. What one person misses, another one could easily catch, which could lead to you getting more money than you initially thought.

The other reason is each appraiser likely specializes in a single category of jewelry. All metals act differently, so it can be challenging to catch the nuances of the various types. Plus, if you have gemstone on it, that will take an even higher level of expertise in order to determine its value.

Determine the Melt Value

Not all antique jewelry is worth something, unfortunately. That’s why you need to figure out what their melt value is. This is what your jewelry is worth if you detach the gems, melt all of the metals down, and then sell the pieces separately. Even though it’ll be upsetting to destroy such an old relic, this might be your only option if you really want to get your money’s worth.

Figure Out Where To Sell

After all of the previous steps on what to do before selling antique jewelry are dealt with, it’s time to actually sell them. Depending on their condition, you can either sell them to a professional who can then resell them, or you can do it directly online.

Sales through the internet are the best way to get all of the money you can out of the deal, but if you really feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, it might be best to sell to a jeweler. We’d recommend that you do it through a family-owned company. They will likely give you the best deal possible, especially if you know them. Plus, it’s always a great idea to help out local shops.