GUEST: These are some antique jade pieces that were acquired in about the last 12 years. They were bought from auctions investing with a family member.
APPRAISER: And so obviously you like jade.
GUEST: Yes, very much.
APPRAISER: So the first thing I'd like to talk about here is the necklace. Here we have this beautiful jade necklace. They're carved balls. And then there's these three jade rings that are connected, and these are all interconnected by gold wirework links. This piece dates probably around the 1930s or '40s. Do you recall how much you paid for the piece?
GUEST: This piece was about $5,000. There was an investment in this.
APPRAISER: Okay, the second item we have here is a pair of earrings. These are diamonds, jadeite cabochons, and I would date these somewhere around the 1960s. Do you recall what you paid for these?
GUEST: I think about $3,000.
APPRAISER: And then lastly, we have the jade and diamond ring. This piece has a beautiful cabochon jade with the diamonds in yellow gold. And do you recall what's the price on this?
GUEST: It was probably about the same price as the earrings, about $3,000.
APPRAISER: So one thing we'll notice with the jade in the necklace is that we see a lot of variegation of the material, a lot of patterning, and light and dark areas within the beads, which is not a bad thing, but you want the patterning to match consistently throughout, which is what the necklace does, and it's done very well in that respect. So this is a very good matching of multiple pieces of jade. The next level up is when you have two pieces, you want to look to try to make sure that they match as closely as possible. So you have these two pieces here, a little bit of variegation, but also well-matching. One's slightly darker than the other one. And lastly, the ring, which has this beautiful sort of glassy, gemmy, jelly beany kind of piece in the center. When you look at the stone from the side position, you can see that the cabochon is uneven. And this is very typical of what we call old mine material. They were cutting the stone not for a specific shape, but they were cutting it for the color that was existing in the piece. So we know that the jade is actually much older than this mounting is. So it was probably out of an earlier piece that was later remounted.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Probably in the last 30 or 40 years.
GUEST: That's amazing.
APPRAISER: But a beautiful piece of jade. So we've got good, better and best as far as jade is concerned. So you said you paid $5,000 for this piece, and I would say in today's market, this piece-- if you were going to go out and buy it again-- you would be looking at somewhere around $7,000.
GUEST: Oh, okay, very good.
APPRAISER: On the earrings, you said about $3,000. And in today's marketplace, at auction, you would have to probably pay around $8,000 or $9,000 for them.
GUEST: (laughing) Wow. Wow. That is very, very good news.
APPRAISER: But where you've done best is on your ring. The jade market has gone up quite a bit, and with a piece of jade of this quality, in today's market at auction, you're looking at somewhere between $15,000 to $20,000.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: So this is the best piece you've got. It also is the prettiest. And it's a really beautiful piece of jade.
GUEST: Thank you, Peter. That is such good news. This looked like a little jelly belly, but it's not worth a jelly belly.
APPRAISER: No, a little bit more.
