News

A customer came in last spring holding a folder. Inside was a detailed appraisal for her engagement ring, dated six years earlier, plus a care plan card from the store that sold it. She had lost the ring on a beach. She believed she was covered. She was not. The appraisal described the ring, the care plan covered manufacturing defects, and nobody had ever added the ring to her home insurance policy. Three documents, and none of them paid out. These three things get used as if they mean the same thing. They do not, and the gaps between them...

A clasp costs a few dollars. The necklace it holds might cost a few thousand. That imbalance is why most lost necklaces get lost, and it is one of the easiest problems in jewellery to fix. Here is how each clasp works, how each fails, and what we would put on your chain. The part that usually breaks is not the clasp Most people who lose a necklace find the clasp still closed, hooked to one end of the chain. They conclude it opened and shut again, which does not happen. What failed was the jump ring. A jump ring...

Almost every bracelet that comes back to us for resizing was ordered off a wrist measurement with nothing added to it. The wearer measured carefully, got 165mm, ordered a 165mm bracelet, and found it sat tight against the skin with the clasp pulling every time they bent their hand. A bracelet length is your wrist circumference plus an allowance, and the size of that allowance depends on what kind of bracelet you are buying. How to measure a wrist properly You need a flexible tailor's tape or a strip of paper about a centimetre wide. A rigid ruler will not...

Peridot is the green stone for August, and every peridot ever mined is green. Always, because of how the mineral is built. That one fact explains most of what you need to know about buying one, and it sits next to a weakness nobody mentions at the counter until you ask. Here is the full picture, including the parts that argue against putting one on your finger. Why peridot cannot be any other colour Peridot is the gem-quality form of a common mineral called olivine, which makes up a large share of the earth's upper mantle. GIA describes peridot as...

A good share of the repair work on our bench comes from Port Moody, and the pattern is usually the same: a ring that has stopped fitting, a chain that broke at the clasp, a watch that died, or a box of inherited pieces nobody has worn in twenty years. This guide covers what a local goldsmith can do for you, how long each job takes, what has to leave the building, and what to bring. Where we are, and how you get here from Port Moody Vanhess is at 2929 Barnet Highway, Unit 2424, in Coquitlam. That address is...

Somebody reads that gold hit a record price, digs out an old chain, brings it to a shop, and hears a number that sounds wrong. That conversation happens at our counter most weeks. The offer is usually fair and the disappointment is usually real, because the headline price and your chain are two different things measured two different ways. We buy gold, so we have an obvious stake here. That is why the arithmetic below is written out in full: you can check every step yourself before selling to us or to anyone else. The headline price describes a refinery...