Trading In Treasures: Heirs Selling Estate Jewels To Buy Stocks June 8, 2000 – Posted in: Press

By MAURA WEBBER
Published: June 8, 2000
Chicago Sun-Times

Within a month of inheriting a gold necklace and bracelet along with a string of pearls and a diamond ring from her grandmother, Monique Djerf of Streeterville sold the pieces to an estate jewelry buyer for $6,000. The 35-year-old, an executive assistant to a Chicago neurosurgeon, plans to invest the money in health care and technology stocks rather than letting the jewels languish in a safe-deposit box.

Djerf is one of a new generation of people liquidating their heirloom jewelry to cash in on the stock market, Chicago area jewelry buyers say.

“If you’re not going to wear them, I believe in selling to make the future more secure,” Djerf said. “It just makes more sense financially.”

Tobina Kahn, vice president of the House of Kahn estate jewelery buyers on Michigan Avenue, has seen dozens of clients like Djerf since the Dow Jones industrial average barreled past 10,000 points in March 1999. Though some jewelers say the pace of such sales has slowed recently with the volatility in technology stock prices, Kahn said the penchant to invest rather than adorn is still strong.

“We’re seeing people with very good jobs, doctors and lawyers who are looking and deciding they don’t really need three diamond necklaces sitting in a vault,” Kahn said.

In the past most of the people Kahn saw came to her offices after a death or divorce. Now visits to Kahn often grow out of a clearer sense of financial planning, she said.

It may not be such a bad time to sell high quality jewelry. Gold prices have jumped lately, topping $294 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange Tuesday, the highest price since March 8. Gold closed at $286.70 Wednesday. Although it’s well below its January 1996 peak of $420, it’s up 9 percent from a year ago.

More important, the value of a piece of jewelry is based not just in the metal or gems it contains, but also on its craftsmanship, its relative rarity, and who owned it, Kahn said.

The robust economy has put more disposable income into the pockets of a certain sector of buyers eager to buy heirloom quality jewelry, said Ron Geweniger, owner of Old World Jewelers in Oak Brook.

“They’re selling into a fairly strong market. There are more people that have money,” Geweniger said.

A number of clients have told Geweniger that they were selling jewelry because they saw buying opportunities in the stock market. In one case, a Naperville man in his 40s decided to sell two watches from his private collection to add to his holdings in biotech stocks, Geweniger said.

“This particular person owns a number of watches and thought he could raise some money and not miss them,” Geweniger said. The man made about $28,000 by selling a Patek Philippe watch and a Cartier timepiece, Geweniger said.

Fidelity Loan Bank in Chicago also was seeing people selling jewelry who said they were interested in buying stock, though President Stephen Greenfield said the recent volatility in the stock market appears to have dampened some of the would-be investors’ enthusiasm.

Still others caution against selling jewelry to fund stock investments because they say rings and necklaces play a different role in a person’s life.
“Most jewelry is an emotional and personal issue,” said Rick Bannerot of the World Gold Council in New York. “I see jewelry more as a function of success rather than a way of getting into the market.”

Kahn doesn’t advocate selling cherished heirlooms. She does suggest people would be wise to consider that money invested in a cache of dusty jewelry in the attic might be put to better use in the stock market. Kahn said she sells the items mostly to European collectors.

Gold and pure metals and stones are part of jewelry’s value. In addition, a person curious about the worth of their jewelry should look for unusual stamped numerals or letters on pieces. The identification can help determine whether the item was made during a particular period sought after by collectors or in a country known for its craftsmanship, Kahn said.

Gold can be worth more than its weight when contained in such pieces as those made by Cartier from the 1920s to the 1950s, bold designs by American designer David Webb and articles made by Van Cleef & Arpels jewelrymakers.
But the process of finding the good items is not always easy.
On a recent Friday, Highland Park resident Phyllis Lipman sat with Kahn for more than an hour sifting through jewelry boxes containing everything from old stamps to colorful costume jewelry and a watch given to Lipman’s mother for her eighth-grade graduation nearly eight decades ago.

Kahn piled a large mound of jewelry to the side that had little value. In the smaller grouping of jewelry left on a swathe of black velvet was a gold watch and two diamond rings.

Kahn plans to remove the stones from their settings to accurately determine their worth, and let Lipman know what she could pay her for them.
Lipman expects the proceeds will be much easier to divide among her three young grandchildren than rings and watches. She hopes the money can be invested to use later for their education.

“I just don’t want something to happen to me and then my kids will have to deal with it,” she said.

The transaction over, Lipman wasn’t disappointed with the results. She looked at the pile of costume bracelets and earrings in anticipation of some priceless fun with her two young granddaughters. “Now I can let them play with it and I don’t have to worry.”
Maura Webber is a Chicago-based business writer.