Carat / How it works
What happens between the photograph and the number
Carat does two separate jobs, in order. First it decides what the piece is. Only then does it look for what pieces like it have recently sold for. Keeping them apart is what stops a hopeful identification from inflating a price.
It reads the piece before it reads the market
The first pass looks only at the photographs: the metal and its colour, the surface and wear, the setting style, the cut and proportions of each stone, and any mark stamped into the metal. Nothing about price enters this step, because a valuation that leaks backwards into an identification produces the answer you were hoping for rather than the one in front of you.
Hallmarks are transcribed, not interpreted away
A mark is quoted exactly as it appears — “750”, “PT950”, a lion passant, a date letter — and is graded clear, partial or illegible. Carat says what a mark means and how confident it is; where a mark is worn, it says that instead of choosing the flattering reading. A sharp close-up of the inside of a band is worth more than five angles of the whole piece.
The verdict has three steps and always shows its reasons
Likely genuine, inconclusive, or likely simulant. Each verdict lists what argues for it and what argues against it, and names the test that would settle the question: a thermal probe, a 10x loupe, a specific-gravity test, or a report from a gem laboratory. A photograph cannot do any of those, and Carat does not pretend otherwise.
Value is searched, not remembered
The second pass runs a live search for recent completed sales of comparable pieces and the current spot price of the metal, then formats what it found. When that search returns nothing usable, the figure is marked as an estimate rather than dressed up as a grounded one, and the sources are listed either way.
Three markets, because there is no single price
Melt is the metal alone: weight times purity times spot, and it is the floor under any gold piece. Resale is what comparable pieces actually change hands for second-hand. Retail replacement is what a shop would charge for something similar, which is the figure an insurer wants. Most jewellery resells for well under its retail price, and a single number would hide that.
Ask the gemologist about your piece
The dossier is the start of a conversation, not the end of one. You can ask follow-up questions about the piece — how to clean it, where to sell it, what a specific mark means, what would confirm the stone — and the answers stay tied to the dossier that was written for your photographs.
What it will not do
- It will not tell a lab-grown diamond from a natural one. They are the same material; only a gem laboratory’s instruments can separate them reliably.
- It will not weigh a stone. Carat weight from a photograph is an estimate from proportions, not a measurement.
- It will not value sentiment, provenance without documents, or condition it cannot see from the angles you gave it.
- It will not replace a qualified appraiser. For insurance, probate or a sale of consequence, take the piece to one.