The Birmingham Assay Office was created by an Act of Parliament in 1773 to test and assess the precious metal quality and then apply the British Hallmark. We have been carrying out consumer protection on jewellery and precious metal items for over 240 years.

SafeGuard is a division of The Birmingham Assay Office, and one of the largest jewellery valuation service providers in the UK. Trusted and working with over 1,300 Retailers in the UK to provide accurate and trusted valuation documents accepted by all major insurance companies. We also work with Trading Standards and The Police on many cases and queries because of our independence - we are not linked to insurance companies, bullion dealers, or auction houses.

Our Team of expert Valuers are highly qualified professionals with decades of experience in the jewellery trade, who pride themselves on their gemmological skills, qualifications,  experience and knowledge, of jewellery and silverware.

Let us help you resolve your queries and questions around items you have inherited, or simply items you have held on to for may years unsure of what you should do. We have the expertise and knowledge to help you make the right decisions.

Our staged service will

1. Initially sort through your items to determine those which have no intrinsic value and those that do.
2. Based on your own threshold – (this could be £1,000, based on your insurance policy agreement, with regards to specified single items ) we can create a list of your items with a description following a thorough review, assessing the precious metals and correctly identifying and grading all diamonds and gemstones.
3. An indication of “value” can then be assigned to each item. This could be disposal value or insurance. This document will have a description of the item, but this would not be accepted as a valuation for insurance purposes.
4. From this original portfolio  you can then decide which items you would like to have valued in a form which would be accepted by your insurance company – this would state a replacement value i.e. what would you expect to pay for a new item of the same quality and stone weights on the UK high street. The valuation comes in its own presentation folder with notes to valuation. There is an image and a full description of the item.

This fantastic service starts from £5.00 listing and initial sorting cost per item. If you would like to understand more about how we review the items please email us to find out more.