Appraisal: Matched-pair Diamond Ring, ca. 1910

GUEST: I brought a ring that was in my family for many years.

My great-great-grandfather immigrated to Milwaukee in 1864.

He was 19 years old.

He was an apprentice jeweler.

He started a family there, but then moved to Chicago, where he opened a jewelry store.

Had that for many years, I don't know how long.

And this was from his jewelry store.

It was given to my grandmother, who, in turn, gave it to my aunt.

Aunt Betty was very close with our family.

She would come to our house in Michigan, she came for Sunday dinner, and she gave this to me when she was ill, was getting older.

The story she told me was that Grandpa said these were a perfect match diamond, so I'd just like to find out what you think about that.

APPRAISER: It's a lovely, lovely ring.

They are what we call an old European cut, it's an older-style cut.

Now, today, the more modern stones are cut, the facets slightly different.

These have open culets in them.

I measured the stones and they are almost identically matched.

One stone I estimated weighs two carats, and the other weighs just slightly more, 2.05 carats.

The top stone is the stone that's slightly larger.

The color is very nice on them-- it's not a perfect color, but a very high color.

They are, like, an H to an I color.

So they're basically colorless to the human eye.

In the sunlight, they would be extremely brilliant.

They're very clean stones.

There is a slight chip on the girdle, which is the edge of the stone, on one of them.

Probably got hit on a sink or something and it got-- it's a slight chip, just on the very edge of the stone.

That could easily be polished and could be fixed.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: When do you think he gave this to your grandmother?

GUEST: I would say this was made in the early 1900s?

APPRAISER: Well, they're certainly cut like they were from the early, they could be from the early 1900s.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: The mounting looks a little later, so it probably was remounted at one time.

GUEST: Okay, okay.

APPRAISER: Did you ever have this appraised?

GUEST: No, I've never had it appraised.

No.

And I don't know that anyone had, I don't think Aunt Betty did, either.

APPRAISER: I see.

If you had to venture a guess, what would you guess the valuation on the piece is?

GUEST: We thought maybe a couple of thousand dollars.

APPRAISER: Okay.

The diamond market is very strong right now.

I would say that these two stones, being matched, which also increases the value of the stones because it's difficult to find two matching stones.

You can go through thousands of stones trying to find two stones that match.

These two stones, in a retail situation today, would easily be about $15,000 each, so you're looking at $30,000 for the two diamonds.

GUEST: Oh, my goodness.

That's remarkable news.

Lovely, lovely.

(laughs) APPRAISER: A little more than $2,000.

GUEST: (laughing) Yes, sir.

Well, thank you so much.