Jewellery Evaluation & Best Market Places

Invest_SK

Hi all, I am new to the forum. There have been a couple of posts regarding the above topic, all of which are now closed, so worth giving it a go.

I want to sell some jewellery which was passed through my family, some of it is branded, other is not. Therefore, it is nigh impossible to know its value. Valuations are charged per item and needed for insurers. Not justified in my case. Has anyone come across free valuations? Any good websites for researching the market? 

Regarding selling, I can see some people have been using  Ebay, Etsy and facebook.  Has anyone sold through vintage cashcow? What about physical shops? 

Any tips or suggestions, will be appreciated. 

DullGreyGuy

Why would someone value it for free? Do you do your work without pay?

Jewellers typically either do a fixed price per item or a percentage of its value.... depending on how valuable you think the items are one or the other may be cheaper for you. If you use them to either sell it or sell it to them they may waive or reduce the valuation fee. 

How's best to sell it will depend how quickly you want the money and how stress free the process. The easiest/quickest is to simply sell them to a shop who may just give you scrap price. You get the cash up front, no risks that are associated with eBay etc but it'll be the lowest price. You'll get a middle place by selling them yourself via any of the channels out there but there is always a risk the receive claims you sent a rock rather than a diamond ring etc. Some will allow you to put the item(s) in their window in exchange for a percentage of the sale, these may get better prices than eBay, maybe not on a net basis, but could sit there for a year or more unsold. 

The only bits we've sold were not high designer brands and not particularly in vogue so just sold for scrap.

DiamondLil

You will have a hard time selling jewellery for what you think it's worth. A local auction house will give you a guide to the value, otherwise it's one of the online auction sites or Hatton Garden.

Brie

I took a load of my mom's jewellery into a shop she'd gone to for years to have rings cleaned etc.  They were very helpful about dividing things up into 

• not worth much (costume jewellery or too little precious metal/gems to be bothered) Suggested selling on ebay or similar.  There's a lovely quirky pewter llama pin and other such things. 
• some precious metal or gems - worth the weight of the gold/silver only - the sort of thing you could get a quick quote from one of those "we buy any gold" type places.  But still there was a the suggestion that it might get more on ebay.  Old wedding rings, earrings with a cracked opal etc.
• valuable items that they would be happy to do an official valuation on and knew that there was more to them than simply how much gold might be in a ring.  One was an old and official ring for an elite men's club, another a pearl necklace of good quality.

Whether you would be able to find a similar place is hard to say.