Is My Appraisal Out of Whack?

[SureShoe]

I received my diamond and appraisal from James Allen. I bought the diamond for $7600, plus roughly $3000 in settings. Total cost after everything was $10,200.

The appraisal from James Allen came in at $20,200.
The stone was appraised at $14,341.80 - almost twice what I paid.
It is nice stone - GIA - 1.23 carat, F color, SI1 eye clean, table 57%, depth 60.4%, crown 33.5, pavil 41.0, polish: Ex, sym: Ex, Flur: none.

I''m not worried about insurance - my agent already had me setup on an "agreed upon value" policy of $10,000, so I could replace it if I needed.

But, it threw me off that the diamond came in at nearly twice what I paid for it.

My insurance agent says appraisals usually have a 25%-35% "compliment mark-up" to make you feel like you got a good deal. But, he was thrown off by my appraisal.

Is this normal?

 

[Regular Guy]

You feel better, don''t you?

Just send it back to Jim, have him refund you just 2/3 the value of the appraisal, and call it a day.

Actually, I recall my appraisal from Jim coming in similarly. Also actually, my appraisal later done from an independent appraiser was still 1/3 higher than I paid Jim, and that''s the one I went with.

I read here that appraisal reports from vendors can be more useful than the one Jim supplies (recently from GOG), which I guess is your point. Using the higher valuation Jim gave you, certainly you, Jim and the insurer are more than covered, however, yes, you''d be paying more monthly than you should need to for insurance. Probably you should get it separately appraised, which is frequently recommended here anyway. The description, as I recall, that came with Jim''s appraisal was not particularly helpful for identifying the qualities of the stone, and a third party appraisal can definitely improve on that.

 

[ephemery1]

We bought our stone from an online vendor for $7200, and paid $950 for the white gold setting from a local B&M... for a grand total of $8150. The B&M appraised the completed ring at $23,000... almost 3x what we paid... and they didn''t even sell us the stone! So who knows what their motivation for a "feel good" appraisal would be... but as RegularGuy pointed out, it worked... we did feel better!

I posted here inquiring as to why it might have happened, and learned it is pretty common practice. We''re just going to have ours reappraised by an independent appraiser so our insurance cost isn''t exorbitant.

 

[Modified Brilliant]

WOW! That''s a huge difference in value! Did you ask the B & M appraiser why????

www.metrojewelryappraisers.com

 

[ephemery1]

Date: 7/27/2006 3:25:55 PM
Author: Modified Brilliant
WOW! That''s a huge difference in value! Did you ask the B & M appraiser why????

www.metrojewelryappraisers.com

No, actually... that would have been the logical thing to do though!

My fiance picked up the finished ring, and I don''t think he looked at the appraisal until he was back home again. The B&M may not have known what we paid for the stone, as we purchased it online... so maybe they just took a guess? And guessed high for "feel-good" value? It is a well-cut 1.51ct oval, F SI1... but with an EGL cert. We took a gamble on the cert and had Chris at D.Atlas take a look at the stone before purchasing... he said it all checked out, so I think we got a bit of a deal without paying the premium a GIA or AGS cert might have commanded. We''re taking it back to D.Atlas to get it independently appraised, so it''ll be interesting to see what they say. I''d imagine theirs will be a bit more accurate!