GUEST: These were passed down from my dad's side of the family, so I'm not sure if they're Great-Grandma's or Great-Great-Grandma's.
APPRAISER: And where would they have come from?
GUEST: My parents were from Germany, and all of my grandparents are also from Germany.
APPRAISER: From Germany as well. When did they come to the United States?
GUEST: My parents came over in 1951.
APPRAISER: Okay. In the inside of the box it does mention that the jeweler was based in Hamburg, so that certainly confirms that we know that this was a family piece, we know where it came from. These date from the late 19th century. These are about 1880, 1890. The reason I thought that these two items were so interesting is that this is a really good example of what a jeweler will do with an item when a client comes to a jeweler to have an item redesigned or updated. So what we have here is a bracelet and a bar brooch. Now, these are all set with what we call rose-cut diamonds. Now, typically rose-cut diamonds are very flat on the bottom, they're slightly domed, and they have lots of triangular facets across the surface. It's usually reserved as an older cutting style. You don't normally associate them with the late 1890s. But what happened here is that these two triangular stones that are on either side of the bar brooch were actually from a pair of earrings that were made in the late 1700s, early 1800s. So the jeweler took the antique earrings, put them in the bar brooch, and then created a bracelet to go along with it using not only the same design elements, but the same style of stones. So you can see the little small round diamond here is carried through in the design motif at the corners of the central stone. The central stone is a rose cut. These are rose cuts. The bracelet is set in rose gold and the bar brooch is set in rose gold, while the diamonds in the bar brooch are actually mounted in silver-topped gold, which is what would be appropriate for a pair of earrings from that time period. When he set the antique earrings into the bar brooch, he actually maintained the original settings from the antique earrings. So all that would need to be done would be to have these taken off the bar brooch. They could be restored to the original earrings if that were something that were of interest to you. You're not going to devalue the items at all.
GUEST: Oh. Okay.
APPRAISER: In terms of a value, the bar brooch alone would be valued between $10,000 and $15,000 at auction.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: The bracelet would be valued between $6,000 and $8,000 at auction.
GUEST: Wow, that's incredible.
