
How do we prepare our antique and secondhand jewellery for sale?
Here’s the second in a series of short blogs by Amy letting you into a few trade secrets of our shop.
We’re extremely proud that part of our guarantee to customers is that every single item purchased from us is checked and in a condition that allows it to be ready to wear and to last generations.
To ensure this, we follow a strict process:
- CHECK – when a new piece arrives, we carefully examine it. We check that the identity of the stones matches what we bought it as, we check the condition of the piece to assess what repairs if any are needed, we test the metal to ensure it matches the hallmarking assay mark.
- CLEAN – Each piece is sent to our workshop to be professional cleaned. This removes any dust and grease from the stones. The shanks are polished on a gentle buffer machine to remove scratches. Repairs are only carried out if we feel they are going to positively enhance the jewel and be sympathetic to the overall integrity of the piece.
- CHECK – When the items returns from the workshop, we check again to ensure the piece is totally clean and has not been damaged during the cleaning process.
- CATALOGUE – every item is allocated a stock code and fully catalogued and photographed. This involves writing a description of the item including weights, measurements, hallmarks, gemstone sizes and any information we have about its provenance. We take photographs of all of our stock from different angles to use on our website and send to customers to showcase each piece to its best advantage, as well as a record of items we have in stock for insurance purposes.
Browse our online shop to see for yourselves!