Jewelry Appraisal Calculator

The Jewelry Appraisal Calculator estimates four different values for the same piece — Retail Value, Insurance Value, Resale Value, and Melt/Scrap Value — by combining a Metal Value (weight times a price-per-gram figure for your selected Metal Type) with a Stone Value (driven by Stone Type, Stone Carats, and Stone Quality), then applying a Craftsmanship premium on top of the combined total. Two fields move the appraisal dramatically, in different ways: Stone Quality's multiplier ranges from 0.2x at Commercial up to 3.0x at Exceptional, so re-grading an identical stone across that scale alone moves Stone Value fifteen times over (and Retail Value by somewhat less, since the metal content is a floor that does not change), while Stone Carats compounds even more sharply for diamonds specifically — the model raises diamond carat weight to the 1.8 power, so a large, high-carat diamond can be worth vastly more than the same quality grade applied to a small one. Every other stone type in this calculator scales linearly with carat weight instead of the 1.8-power curve diamonds get.

The gap between the four value outputs reflects different real-world contexts rather than different calculations of the "true" value: Insurance Value runs above Retail Value because replacement-cost coverage needs to account for retail markup and market fluctuation, while Resale Value and Melt/Scrap Value run well below it, reflecting how little of what a retail buyer pays is typically recoverable in a private sale or at a refiner's scrap price. This calculator uses illustrative per-gram metal prices and stone base prices rather than live market data, so treat every output as a rough planning estimate — a real appraisal for insurance or estate purposes requires a certified gemologist's physical inspection.