One of the most special ways memories are held is through heirlooms passed down from generation to generation. Having a piece of family history that you can hold is precious. Jewelry is a common way to mark milestones like graduation, birthday, or wedding. When treasuring family jewelry, it’s easy to get lost in its sentimental value and forget its monetary value, but staying up to date in insuring jewelry keeps it safe from unexpected losses.

In today’s rapidly changing insurance market, it can be easy to overlook reviewing your existing coverages. While most items on your policy decline in value over time, have you thought about the items on your policy that increase in value, like your jewelry? Are you adequately covered?

Unlike most other property items that depreciate over time, jewelry happens to appreciate or increase in value. The Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index says jewelry made of precious metals and stones appreciates on average 49% in value over five years and 142% over 10 years.

Gold is especially known for its increase in value. According to Macrotrends’ website, the price of gold has increased from $1,868.88 in July 2022 to $2,381.88 in May 2024. With inflation impacting all aspects of our lives, there is no doubt that jewelry has skyrocketed in value over the past few years.

Since the value of your jewelry items can fluctuate with inflation, it is important to stay up to date on your collection, most jewelers recommend getting your jewelry appraised as often as every two years. This way you will always have an accurate value, resulting in adequate coverage to your Personal Articles floater. In the event of a loss, our companies will pay no more than the amount of insurance scheduled for each item. This is why it is important to insure your pieces are at their current value.

To keep your jewelry collection accounted for and protected, we recommend you:

1. Create an inventory of your items.
2. Keep all documentation, such as bills of sale and appraisal reports.
3. Check your insurance policy each year at renewal.  We can help with that if you have your jewelry insured with us.

There’s an old phrase: “It’s a too beautiful thing to waste!”  Not insuring your personal jewelry could be tragic if you have a theft or loss.  We can help!  EMAIL us at info@BentonWhite.com or TEXT/CALL 615.377.1212.  We always like to say: “if it can be insured, we can insure it …. and we’ll service it too!” 

We enjoy working with our clients and are always open to introducing new customers to our agency to treat them like we want to be treated and help them with their insurance portfolios.  We’re here and ready! If you know of someone needing insurance, we would appreciate you passing our name along because we think we are different and we make a difference in ‘insured people’s lives!”

THANKS for reading our blog!

(a portion of the content of this blog was taken from advertising/marketing communication from Auto-Owners Insurance.  This blog was edited by Maggie C. Howard!)