Sadly, I have my husband’s wedding band because he lost so much weight he wasn’t wearing in when he died and I didn’t get it to the funeral home.
My SMom (you’ve heard of her in my prior posts?) had my Mom’s wedding band melted down and given back to me in the shape of a heart (and only about 1/3 of the original gold). None of us wants to wear that.
I have a collection of rings that don’t fit anyone — and odd earrings.
And in the end, I don’t know what I’d want to have made. It just seems a bit wasteful not to consolidate these pieces into something that will be appreciated.
My mom did this a number of times with beautiful outcomes. I’ve been thinking about it myself but haven’t bit the bullet yet because I don’t have a trusted jeweler. Part me wants to wait to see if my D ever gets engaged because I have enough options for her to have metal and stones to create whatever she would want.
In my mom’s will, (don’t laugh) she had two bequests. The first was she left her dog to me. The second was that her jewelry be divided evenly between my two kids.
DD has one of the diamond rings…had some repair and is her engagement ring. DS really didn’t want any of the jewelry, but got a very pricey watch anyway. He will probably sell it at some point.
I have the rest of the jewelry here. One thing is a rose gold watch setting that has six small cut rubies in it. We have a bunch of other gold stuff too. My plan is to get a pair of earrings made with the rose gold and maybe a white gold…or something. What we did was contact a specialty jewelry maker who does just this sort of thing.
I have mentioned this before, but my MIL, who had no daughters, wanted to give her jewelry to her 2 DIL. She divided it into pairs of similar value (i.e., 2 diamond rings.) My SIL doesn’t wear jewelry so didn’t care what she got as she would probably sell it or give it away.
My MIL and I spent a lovely, memorable afternoon (at the table where I now sit!) during which she told me the story of each piece. I chose mostly based on the stories. Many pieces were of little value but had wonderful personal history.
She gave me the pieces then and there, but could just as easily designated them for distribution later. In any case, this was a really productive, upbeat, and awesome way to deal with this issue. I’d recommend this to any family!
My MIL sat at a table with SIL and me probably 15 years or so ago, and she showed us the jewelry she didn’t wear but wanted to pass along to the grandkids. She told us who should get what. A couple years ago, H suggested to his mom that it would be nice if she gifted the jewelry to the kids while she is still alive. She told him that she doesn’t have any jewelry to give to our kids. That sure surprised us! Believe me, our kids don’t care whether they get any jewelry … but it was kind of a shock to H & me that she had told us she was leaving them stuff & later pretended like she never told us that.
I took two sets of my grandmother’s earrings and turned them into pendants. They had French style posts and it was very simple to have a jeweler take off the post and add a bail to have it go through a chain. I don’t have pierced ears, and this allowed me to make two matching pendants from each pair of earrings one for me and one for my sister.
My engagement ring is a diamond from a men’s ring that my husband’s grandfather wore. We put a CZ in the men’s ring (although my husband has no interest in wearing any jewelry)
So, you can be creative with repurposing inherited jewelry. That being said, you can also sell the gold by the ounce of pieces you have no use for. We recently did this with a bunch of inherited jewelry that we had no interest in.
My engagement ring diamond is from H’s grandma. We designed the setting. It’s not huge, but it’s meaningful. I have my mom’s engagement ring, which I had resized for my pointer finger. I make sure to wear it to every family function so that my mom is there, too.
My high school class ring was 14k gold. I had no interest in wearing it after I graduated from high school, so I had it melted down and made into a nugget pendant. I took the money I received from various people as graduation gifts and purchased a small diamond that was mounted into the nugget. I don’t wear it now (I don’t think gold nuggets as pendants are really in style now), but I did for a long time. It was a fun way to amalgamate my class ring with graduation gifts.
Jewelry discussions are very hard for me for reasons that are too painful for me to go into.
My mother made similar statements over her last decade, specifying who should get her jewelry and various collections. Each time, she changed her mind according to who’d fallen into disfavor. Eventually, and before I had kids, she decided it would all go to her granddaughters. The next thing I heard from her was that my eldest brother had stolen her jewelry, other valuables and bank statements. Since she often lied, and had shown signs of dementia, I didn’t believe her. After her death we learned he’d stolen far more than she knew. Sadly, if she hadn’t had a long standing habit of lying about things big and small we would have taken steps to protect both her and my parents’ estate.
Several of us have a ‘black sheep’ in the family who steals - a friend (one of 12) had parents that didn’t have a lot, but the one son stole swords and things from dad’s military travels/service. I have a brother who did things to sneak away with stuff (I was recovering with cancer treatment and wasn’t even sure about my long-term survival – and it affected important things that were to come to me) and also made more stuff go through the auction so he could benefit from split of auction proceed This brother cannot return to this country due to some of his misdeeds catching up with him (white collar convicted felon). Relatives where he now lives invite him for major holidays - sometimes he is working, but he keeps a low profile for the most part.
we sold miscellaneous sterling silver pieces to those firms that often have collecting events at jewelry stores. Got a perfectly acceptable price and it is not in a closet taking up space. Nobody wants silverplate; it is even less desirable than the china service so check first!
You will likely get a better price by listing it for sale (Ebay, Facebook marketplace) by piece and name of pattern than you will for melt down value. There are several very helpful silver collector groups on Facebook-- a range of antique dealers and other experts- and if you join (most of them are closed groups) and post a clear picture front and back of each piece, someone will quickly tell you the name of the pattern if you don’t know. Then you can google the name and the piece (sardine fork, cream soup spoon, etc.) and see the price ranges…
My dad has said for years he would prearrange his funeral and pay for it. He never did. So tomorrow my sister and I have an appointment at a funeral home owned by a friend of her husband. It has an excellent reputation. We will plan and pay for everything, not knowing if Dad’s funeral will be in two weeks, six months, or five years
We won’t mention this to Dad now. If he does recover, I think he’s going to be annoyed we did this but my sister said she doesn’t care. This will be the second time we’ve gone through this exercise and she doesn’t want to do it a third time. I will let her tell Dad!
My sister and I received my stepmother’s jewelry when she passed (she had no children). Her only request was that my oldest daughter receive her wedding set. She had very small, dainty fingers and the diamond was a shape that D didn’t care for and would therefore not likely wear, even repurposed. With D’s blessing, I sold the set to an estate jeweler and when it came time for D to get engaged to our now son-in-law, I gave him the proceeds to put toward her engagement ring.
My dad gave us several pieces of diamond jewelry that was our great-grandmother’s. Several years back, I had my original engagement ring redesigned and wanted to incorporate some of those diamonds into the new setting. Unfortunately, the jewelry designer pointed out that my GG’s diamonds were a lesser quality and would not match well with my diamond, so I ended up having them made into a pendant necklace.
I am glad this is being taken care of, but what a hard thing. My dad had his (and mom’s) prepaid and semi-planned and it was a good idea even though it was sad to do. I hope there is some peace in knowing you are taking the best care of him.
