Would YOU consider altering a Harry Winston colored stone bracelet?

[Mayacamus]

Hello,

I found a Harry Winston bracelet in a local auction that is beautiful, but too short for me. Its must have been a bracelet companion to a necklace, with floral design of rubies (5 circular small rubies around a central small ruby all fo the same size) and spaced with a ruby-diamond-ruby. The price is potentially very right...

I am not allowed to photograph the bracelet, im sorry...

I was thinking that I could take the central ruby from the floral design (which is super simple) replace it with diamonds, and add one "flower" adding about a 3/4 inch in length.

Question:
1. Would altering the bracelet ruin the value?
2. Would you buy the bracelet at the right price and make alterations?
3. What else would you consider?


Thank you!
Maya

 

[Rfisher]

Sounds pretty!


my uneducated thoughts:
1- not sure, but I guess it would if the price you would be buying it for has a premium for the HW name attached. But I think the Who and the What of the alteration is a consideration as well.
2- absolutely
3- I would find out before the auction, if I could have HW themselves do the adjustment. If that’s not possible, the quality of the benchs work I chose would be a huge factor in my enjoyment of the piece and another factor in the selling of it again someday, which is a part of your question in retaining the value of what you paid. I think the price you’d be wanting to sell it for would be a large part of if the buyer cares the piece is unauthorized /authorized alteration or not. Plus if it comes with definite proof it’s a genuine HW

 

[voce]

1. Yes
2. No
3. Same as the answer above

 

[AllAboardTheBlingTrain]

I would also enquire about whether the bracelet adjustment can be made by HW or not. I have a friend who inherited a signed piece (of a famous jewelry house) and managed to damage it, but when she went to get it fixed from a local jeweler they refused to touch it because they said by working on it they would reduce the piece’s value and she would be much better off getting it fixed by the actual maison.

On the off chance that it cannot be extended by HW, I would get an extender piece made that can be clipped on and clipped off by another jeweler instead of messing with the HW bracelet itself. I assume this bracelet has a clasp, so you could get a section of the bracelet replicated into an extender piece (so if it looks like this: I would create a section that looks like: or one that looks like - I used yellow flower because there was no white flower emoji to signify either diamond or metal, whatever is in your budget). The rubies on either end will connect to the actual bracelet, but it’s detachable, so you won’t lose any value if you resell the bracelet (assuming that you buy it with some proof that it’s really HW).

Edit: there are no emojis on PS?? I’ll leave this comment the way it is but let me try and find a way to explain what I mean in a follow up comment because I know what I’ve written is unclear

 

[AllAboardTheBlingTrain]

I would also enquire about whether the bracelet adjustment can be made by HW or not. I have a friend who inherited a signed piece (of a famous jewelry house) and managed to damage it, but when she went to get it fixed from a local jeweler they refused to touch it because they said by working on it they would reduce the piece’s value and she would be much better off getting it fixed by the actual maison.

On the off chance that it cannot be extended by HW, I would get an extender piece made that can be clipped on and clipped off by another jeweler instead of messing with the HW bracelet itself. I assume this bracelet has a clasp, so you could get a section of the bracelet replicated into an extender piece (so if it looks like this: I would create a section that looks like: or one that looks like - I used yellow flower because there was no white flower emoji to signify either diamond or metal, whatever is in your budget). The rubies on either end will connect to the actual bracelet, but it’s detachable, so you won’t lose any value if you resell the bracelet (assuming that you buy it with some proof that it’s really HW).

Edit: there are no emojis on PS?? I’ll leave this comment the way it is but let me try and find a way to explain what I mean in a follow up comment because I know what I’ve written is unclear

Okay, PS has its own emojis, so I guess I could use that but it’s going to look ridiculous haha.

assuming that = small round diamond; = small round ruby; = ruby flower and = diamond/white metal flower in the style of the ruby flower, <> = Original piece clasp, () = extender piece clasp that slots into the original piece

From your description, your bracelet sounds like it looks like this:
<><>

I would not change or alter this bracelet in any way, I would have a piece created by another jeweler that is detachable, that looks like this:
()()

Then, when worn, the bracelet will look like this at the point where it is clasped closed:

<>()()<>

I hope this is clear and not ridiculous, and it helps!

 

[pearaffair]

Lol adorable bracelet depictions! I think you need to buy it so we can see it

 

[JPie]

Okay, PS has its own emojis, so I guess I could use that but it’s going to look ridiculous haha.

assuming that = small round diamond; = small round ruby; = ruby flower and = diamond/white metal flower in the style of the ruby flower, <> = Original piece clasp, () = extender piece clasp that slots into the original piece

From your description, your bracelet sounds like it looks like this:
<><>

I would not change or alter this bracelet in any way, I would have a piece created by another jeweler that is detachable, that looks like this:
()()

Then, when worn, the bracelet will look like this at the point where it is clasped closed:

<>()()<>

I hope this is clear and not ridiculous, and it helps!

You win for best use of emojis!

 

[LilAlex]

I would buy it in a minute and have the alterations done by a first-class jeweler. And in the style of the original, of course. Maybe without adding a new colored stone that could be impossible to source. Fill the gap with just diamonds.

The best thing about a signed piece like a vintage Cartier or (old) Tiffany or Oscar Heymann is that it's an endorsement of the quality of the colored stones. Any report can say Burma but these will be nice colored stones.

Are you really going to sell this at auction as a Harry Winston? Is your daughter going to throw it away because it's been altered? Of course not. It's not like making a Monet a little bigger so it fits your new couch.

You want it because it's beautiful. Make it fit!

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

i see no point in buying it if your not going to make it fit your wrist

i have small hands, sussage fingers and a fat wrist

i like the idea of the extender in the sympathetic style

 

[emeraldhummingbird]

I agree that an extender is the way to go.
I would not mess with the original piece unless HW was doing it.

 

[Mayacamus]

Thank you all- I appreciate your insights and advice.

Is there a jeweler you would recommend?

Thank you,
Maya

 

[OoohShiny]

Please do not start virtually identical threads in different sections of the forum:

Lengthening a Harry Winston bracelet

Hello Pricescopers, I found a Harry Winston bracelet in a local private invite estate auction. During the preview, I found a bracelet m BUT is too short for me, I am not allowed to photograph the bracelet, im sorry... I was thinking that I could take the central colored stone from the...

www.pricescope.com

It makes it hard for you to keep track of replies and it makes it hard for others to find things using the Search function in the future.

 

[Mayacamus]

Thank you, and I apologize

Now that HW is open I was able to reach out to them and they will work with me to lengthen the bracelet. Thank you for all of your help.

 

[qubitasaurus]

Mmmm just for anyone coming along to read this thread in the future I thought I would clear up a pretty big misconception above. Because it was made by a big name brand does not do much to guarantee the quality of the coloured stones. Attached is the table/list of what treatments Tiffany accepts-- including impregnation with foreign substances for sapphires, and bleaching, surface coating and impregnation with a variety of coloured dyes for many other stones.

You have to remember that the most important thing with these brand name pieces is recognizability. So they are rolled out on a large scale to excruciating levels of precision. Ergo the coloured stones they put in them are either (a) semi precious and not rare at all (b) absolutely tiny or (c) potentially treated to guarantee a reliable supply. Imagine if someone came to pricescope and said they wanted 12 sapphires all exactly matched in colour and all round 5.5 mm to make a bracelet. And then next week they came back and said now they wanted to make the exact same bracelet for all their family members and it had to look 100% identical down to a fraction of a mm, and at most one shade difference on the tone chart. We'd all roll our eyes at them. Tiffany has access to a much larger supply chain, but it does this for many thousands of bracelets on a routine basis. It's not an easy task without accepting some treatments.

This is also why adjusting or modifying such a piece is such a big deal. The piece can be worth far more than its constituent materials.

I would buy it in a minute and have the alterations done by a first-class jeweler. And in the style of the original, of course. Maybe without adding a new colored stone that could be impossible to source. Fill the gap with just diamonds.

The best thing about a signed piece like a vintage Cartier or (old) Tiffany or Oscar Heymann is that it's an endorsement of the quality of the colored stones. Any report can say Burma but these will be nice colored stones.

Are you really going to sell this at auction as a Harry Winston? Is your daughter going to throw it away because it's been altered? Of course not. It's not like making a Monet a little bigger so it fits your new couch.

You want it because it's beautiful. Make it fit!

 

[LilAlex]

Mmmm just for anyone coming along to read this thread in the future I thought I would clear up a pretty big misconception above. Because it was made by a big name brand does not do much to guarantee the quality of the coloured stones.

A "well actually" right back atcha. Huge difference between old -- which is what I specifically referred to -- and modern. New Tiffany is mostly commercial-grade garbage except for a few one-offs that travel the country from flagship to flagship. Old (classic) Cartier, Heyman, Van Cleef and Arpels and others used top-notch colored stones. That is not an opinion. They are not just "name brands"; they were the premier makers of jewelry.

 

[qubitasaurus]

A "well actually" right back atcha. Huge difference between old -- which is what I specifically referred to -- and modern. New Tiffany is mostly commercial-grade garbage except for a few one-offs that travel the country from flagship to flagship. Old (classic) Cartier, Heyman, Van Cleef and Arpels and others used top-notch colored stones. That is not an opinion. They are not just "name brands"; they were the premier makers of jewelry.

This is a bit intangible though. It is not clear how many years back you have to go to make the cut. Nor do I have good documentable data on that far back. So it is difficult to see exactly if there was a slip in quality and precisely when. One would need to find the historical equivalents of the documentation above to properly ground these ideas. Truthfully this would be a poorly spent effort though, as the pieces carry value due to their hallmarks and documentation (original sales reciepts) and recognizability -- irrespective of the quality of the stones.

It is also very difficult to establish how old exactly a piece is when you encounter it at auction -- realistically this isn't quite feasible in many cases. Antique is a bit of a dicey word. One of the things I liked about this thread was that the age question never came up -- even authrenticating a pre-exisiting claim of the auctioneer would be beyond our paygrade. I guess this weighs into the point about original sales reciepts adding value to such items -- curious isn't it that arguably a good fraction of the value of such a 'luxury item' is tied up with a moth eaten piece of paper.