Appraisal Story

 A few months back a customer was selling me a piece of jewelry.  Another customer happened to come in and she noticed the ring the first customer was selling.  She said:  "That's my ring!"

 She was sure that the ring was one that had been stolen from her a few months before.  Customer A (selling the ring) told us that she had owned it for years.  Customer B said it was stolen from her recently.

 The ring was an unusual one.  Not one that there are thousands of just like it.

 What would you do?  Who do you believe?  Both customers are known to me and nice people who I would tend to trust.  Yet their stories contradict each other.  It seems that one is lying (or very wrong).  Maybe one is a thief.  What to do?

 I said, well let's see what we can observe here.  What are the facts?  I checked to see if there was an appraisal on file.  By great good luck, the stolen ring had been appraised by us in the past and the copy was in the file.  (How often does that happen?  Heh!)

 I looked at the appraisal.   I weighed and measured the ring in front of me.  The photo looked like the same ring.  The weight of the ring was different though.  When I checked the measurements of the diamonds, those were also different.  Voila!  The two rings were not the same even though they looked much alike.

What a relief!  Customer B was no longer upset at the thought that here was her stolen ring, and I could now know that Customer A was neither a liar nor a thief (or buying from a thief).

 Moral of the story?  An adequate appraisal needs to have a detailed description including measurements and weights.  A photo is good, but it's not enough.  These two rings looked alike, but one was heavier and the diamonds were not the same sizes.  Without a good appraisal, there would have been at least some hard feelings and probably the involvement of the police!

 Whew!