While many of you may be focused on eating well, exercising, or any number of other resolutions, the turn of the new year makes me think about appraisals.
January is a good time to review your jewelry and watch collection, checking values and adding new pieces to your insurance schedule. Many of you may have an itemized list of pieces that are added to your homeowner’s insurance policy. It is important that these lists, or schedules, are reviewed yearly for accuracy.
While some people worry about being underinsured, you also need to check that insurance companies do not add an automatic value increase that overinsures a piece. A great example of this is a current watch style that should be insured for the U.S. price list retail value, but not more.
Checking your list of pieces also makes sure that nothing is inadvertently left off, or added twice. Have you reset a diamond in a new mount? Be sure and update the appraisal and insurance for that diamond. In addition, make sure to remove the old line item from your schedule. There’s no point in paying two premiums for the same diamond!
Haltom’s Jewelers has a unique appraisal service: we have an independent graduate gemologist come to our store twice a month for appraisal work. All the work is done in our downtown store gem lab, and the jewelry is held in our monitored and alarmed safe.
Today’s appraisals confirm current ownership, photo details and detailed measurements of each piece, as well as current values. This needs to be a detailed process to make sure our customers are completely insured in case of loss.
For more on our appraisal process, you can click here. If you’d like to make sure your pieces are accurately appraised and insured, give us a call and we can help with appointments and estimates for new appraisals.
