September 2005 Archives

A significant portion of Elliott Appraisers' assignments involves clients, who at the request of their insurance carriers, bring their fine jewelry for scheduled property additions and updates. Frequently, clients bring old or earlier documentation for some of the items.
Of special interest, and the focus of my comment, are those replacement value documents made between the years 1980 - 1983.

Upon delivery and review of the new document, the response of the client is often predictable. You will likely agree that the value differences in gold, diamonds and colored stones between 1981 and 2005 are probably remarkable; and your thinking will be right. But I'll bet what you think is not what is... Inevitably, clients ask two broad questions; "what happened", and "why?" So I offer the following (also hopefully informative, entertaining and politically incorrect) distillation of what and why.