Harold Weinstein, fisherman, jeweller, appraiser emeritus and my wise friend with a great heart died on January 8th, 2010.

We jewellers have the privilege of spending our professional lives with precious gems.  I had the rare gift of spending much of my career with a gem of a man, Harold Weinstein.

Harold was born into a trade that has changed greatly over the years.  In Northern Ontario, his father sold pocket watches to miners out of a pack on his back.  Today, jewellery is sold over the internet. One thing that has remained constant over that time is the value of ethics and integrity.  Anyone who knew Harold by reputation, or those of us who were lucky enough to know him personally, could not doubt that integrity was as essential to Harold as breathing.

As a child, Harold started in the business by sweeping the floors of his father’s Sudbury jewellery store on the weekends and after school.  He developed an eye for detail working at the watchmaker’s bench and a love and understanding of jewellery.  This lead him, after his father’s death, to a period as a sales rep for JL Sabbath of Montreal and Siffari Jewellers of Toronto, and then on to his own store.  With his wife, Claire, by his side (in her own right the most savvy fashion jewellery buyer anywhere) Harold built the four-store guild chain called Gordon Jewellers.

He was one of the first independent American Gem Society jewellers in Canada.  At a time when store-owners were telling their salespeople to sell jewellery “just because it sparkles” Harold encouraged his people (as he called us) to take gemmological courses and even offered to pay for most of them.  Harold was an innovator.  In 1970 he was the first to decorate his stores in a single, themed colour;   he banned point of sale displays from his counters and giftware from his showcases.  He bought his diamonds and mountings separately.  A diamond customer could order by weight, quality or price point.  These things that are so common now, Harold was doing 40 years ago.

He became a Vice-President of Peoples Jewellers in 1975, but chafed at corporate restrictions.  After a heart-attack in 1976 he left retail to become a man of leisure but that was not really Harold’s style, and before Claire could object he was off to Bangkok to buy rubies and sapphires.  When he returned he opened a small coloured gemstone and appraisal business “just to keep himself busy”.  Here too he was an innovator, creating a workable diamond cut grade for appraisers that has served as a model for many other systems.

After working behind the scenes for many years on boards and committees, in 1990 he served as President of the Canadian Jewellers Association.  He was a founding member of Jewellers Vigilance Canada, and the first recipient of the Canadian Jeweller Hall of Fame Award as well as a proud member of the 24 Karat Club.

He retired for good in 1997 to spend more time up north fishing, one of his great loves.

His life was enriched by his daughters: Susan, a writer and gifted commentator on the human condition, and Ellen.  Ellen was at the root of another of Harold’s great loves, the community called Daybreak.  For many years, in the spring, Harold canvassed every jeweller, manufacturer, sales rep and stone dealer that he knew..no one was safe…to pledge support for him in the Daybreak walkathon, usually collecting the check before walking.  In his later years as a walker, if he couldn’t make the distance he simply raised the pledge per kilometer.  Over the years his efforts raised tens of thousands of dollars for the developmentally handicapped of this community and the world-wide work of L’Arche, the parent group.  For anyone wanting to remember Harold, a gift to Daybreak would make Claire happiest.

Harold touched many lives.  For me, Harold was a mentor, a friend and a surrogate father.  He was a constant source of good advice and wisdom.  He shared my joys and sorrows, he was a shoulder to cry on and to lean on for more than half my life.  I will miss him very much.

In quiet moments, Harold sometimes regretted that he did not retire a wealthy man.  If the sadnesses of those he left behind were dollars he died wealthy indeed.

Anne Neumann

All the components from which jewellery is made such as gold, diamonds, platinum, and gemstones are bought and sold in US funds.  In the early part of this decade the Canadian dollar was very weak relative to the US.  Do you remember paying $1.60 Canadian to get $1.00 US?  How much does it cost now: par, subpar, $1.06?  There is a big difference.

This exchange rate differential has a profound effect on the US goods and goods priced in US funds that we buy.  Have you been to Chapters for a novel lately?  They are charging less than the US price for most books. The same is true of jewellery prices.  The prices of most gem-set items have fallen sharply because the component prices have come down because the stronger Canadian dollar can buy more than it once did. Items made primarily of precious metals are the exception to this because of the commodity price run-up as the American economy weakens.

A second factor in the downward pressure in the cost of jewellery items is the long-sought repealing of the jewellery excise tax in 2006 which was introduced as a temporary tax during the First World War.  This tax was applied at the wholesale level and the reapeal of it has lowered the cost of jewellery as well.

What does all this mean to an appraiser or an appraisal customer?   An appraisal of an item of jewellery for purposes of insurance reflects the estimated cost to replace the item on the date of the appraisal in the geographical area where the appraisal is prepared.  The appraisal of a recently acquired item reflects the new costs of replacement.  An up-date of previous appraisals reflects the CURRENT cost of replacement.  A value from 2001 or 2002 reflects the cost to replace then, NOT NOW.  The state of the market, the cost of the dollar, the repeal of the tax have all had a tremendous effect on the cost of jewellery.  These factors are taken into account when appraisals are updated.

For an example: an item of jewellery, appraised in 2001 when the US dollar cost 1.60 Canadian and when the excise tax was in force, was valued at $10,000.00.  The same item, priced today at par, is valued at $6,300.00.  To look at it another way. An item priced at $5,000.00US in 2001 would be $8,800.00 Canadian.  Today, at par, a $5,000.00US item is $5,000.00 Canadian.

That’s the effect of currency.  What does it really mean to you?  Well, if you are paying insurance premiums on 2001 or 2002 values, you are paying too much.  An update is clearly in order.

Colour is very important in many gems. Attractive colour is important in gems. Sometimes fashion will dictate colours that are more desirable. Orange is going to be very popular this season, and some orange garnets or citrines will be good accent gems in the orange range. Other colours are timeless, red, blue and green as seen in ruby, sapphire, and emerald, and many other gems for example, remain popular.

Lack of colour can also make a gem desirable. Diamonds are valued for their lack of colour. “D” colour diamonds are entirely colourless and are very rare, and are the most precious of colourless range diamonds (all other things being equal).

Cut will make a gem sparkle and sing. A gem that is beautifully cut will show its colour to the best effect, and its greatest brilliance.

Clarity is important, because colour will look best when it is seen transmitting through a transparent gem, showing so many nuances of colour as light passes through different parts of a gem. Clarity can also influence the benefits of good cut. If a gem is translucent to opaque, it doesn’t matter how well cut it is, because the light can barely pass through it anyway.

Type of gem can influence desirability and therefore value. If the gem is rare, it is likely to have greater value than an equivalent looking gem that is of a very common material. Blue topaz is widely available, and is far more modestly priced than the rarer gem aquamarine.

Now: Size: If you have a gem of very good to exceptional quality in terms of colour, clarity, cut grade, and in gem type, then the remaining factor of size (or carat weight in most cases) can be a very important element of value. A very fine diamond, a ruby, or an exceptional alexandrite, of fine colour, clarity, and cut and of 30 carats, for example is excepionally rare and will be incredibly precious.

The larger the carat weight of a fine gem, the higher the value of that gem. However: If a gem lacks attractive colour, clarity and cut, but is just big, then size alone doesn’t make it valuable.

So, someone offers you a 500 carat topaz, or a 1000 carat sapphire, it is big, but is it worth anything?

We recently saw a 3000 carat opaque sapphire in this laboratory, The sapphire was blue, but had an unattractive grey tone to the blue. The gem was entirely opaque, and really was unattractive. The stone was worth very little, but the client thought it must be worth millions of dollars purely due to size.

We also recently saw a 1,500 carat topaz that was of rich colour, was very transparent, and was well cut, but was cut from material that is readily available in similar colour, clarity, cut and size. was the gem worth a fortune? no. This is for a different reason. gems like this are simply available in whatever size you want, and and as many as you like, so size here is of little importance.

Big may be beautiful, but often isn’t even that, it isn’t something that you want to invest your hard earned money in unless you know a lot more about it than just the size.

The “how much do you want it to be” method of jewellery appraisal is the sort that makes a great deal of money for those who practice it. We never would but it is sometimes really tempting to think about going that route because doing it right is neither fast nor especially profitable.

In the course of our daily activity we make and save jewellery sales:  we help consumers buy confidently and we enable sellers to promote with assurance.  The proper appraisal of jewellery requires an arm’s-length disinterested analysis of the item being appraised.  The appraiser should have no interest in the outcome for either party in a transaction other than providing facts and details that make an informed decision possible.  This is always our goal.

In other words, we work really hard to do it right: to create a document that accurately and completely describes and fairly evaluates an item of jewellery.

What we find is that what we do is generally regarded by the trade and by the public as useless, inconvenient, too low, too high, unnecessary, inaccurate, too expensive, silly, fraudulent, “not the same as the last one I had”, “not identical to my GIA report”, takes too long, is done too quickly, “is lower than my last one”, is a different grade….etc.

Sometimes it just gets to be a bit much.