Everyone knows the ring. Nobody knows the year.
Grandmother wore it, then it went to an aunt, and somewhere in between the receipt, the date and the reason all went missing. What survives is a shape in everyone's memory and nothing you could put in writing. This keeps the rest: the piece, its papers, its passage and the person it goes to next.
Hold the glass over it
Scan a certificate, photograph a receipt, bring in an appraisal you already hold as a PDF — then press and move across the page to read the part that matters. Hallmarks and assay marks are printed small for a reason, and so is everything a valuer writes in the margin.
- Article
- Ring, solitaire
- Metal
- Yellow gold, 750
- Stone
- Old mine cut, 0.74 ct
- Gross weight
- 4.18 g
- Hallmark
- AS · anchor · t
- Appraised
- 14 March 2011
Description — A ladies' solitaire ring in yellow gold of 750 standard, the shank of plain half-round section measuring 2.1 mm at the base and tapering to 1.6 mm at the shoulders, rising to a six-claw coronet setting of slightly later date than the shank itself, which in the opinion of the undersigned indicates a resetting carried out between 1948 and 1960. The stone is an old mine cut brilliant of approximately 0.74 carat, measuring 5.62 by 5.48 by 3.51 mm, of a warm tone consistent with near-colourless to faint yellow, with a small feather breaking the girdle at the position marked on the accompanying diagram and a natural retained at the girdle opposite. No treatment of any kind was detected under magnification of 10× or under long-wave ultraviolet examination.
Hallmark — The shank carries a partially worn maker's punch reading AS within a shaped shield, an anchor denoting the Birmingham assay office, the lion passant for sterling standard applied in error at the date of the original band, and a date letter which under magnification resolves to a lower-case t of the 1893–94 cycle. The coronet carries no marks whatsoever, which supports the later date of the setting and should be noted by any insurer relying upon this document.
Opinion — The piece is of good domestic quality rather than of exceptional manufacture, and derives the greater part of its interest from its family history rather than from its intrinsic content. For replacement purposes the undersigned would direct the insurer to the cost of commissioning a comparable ring from an equivalent stone rather than to the scrap value of the metal, which would be an entirely inadequate measure. This appraisal is prepared for insurance purposes only and does not constitute an offer to purchase.
Reset for Mira's engagement, spring 1961 — ask Aunt N. about the original bandMove the pointer across the page — or press and drag on a touchscreen.
A river of hands
Who gave it, in what year, on what occasion, in which town, and what was actually said that day. Put down enough of those and a single brooch can be followed from a great-grandparent to a grandchild. Touch a hand to hear that stretch of it.
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Name them, say something, set the wax
When you know where a piece should go, write the name and a few lines for whoever opens the box. Then hold the seal until the wax sets — nothing is recorded on a slip of the thumb. One screen afterwards shows who receives what, and which pieces are still waiting for a name.
The mourning brooch has no heir yet
A sealed entry here is a record of your intention, kept for the family — not a will. Keep the legal document wherever it belongs, and let this be the part that explains it.
One tidy envelope, one tidy PDF
Flick whichever pieces need covering into the envelope. The cover carries your policy details, then a schedule with a total, then a page apiece: photographs, provenance and copies of the papers. The gem beside each piece says how ready it is — tap one to see what is still missing.
| Piece | Ready | Appraised |
|---|
Values in your own currency, as last appraised.
0
Nothing selected yet.
A family box is not a database
Nothing is collected and nothing is sent anywhere. There is no account, no shared archive, no valuation service and no server behind this app. The pieces, the scans, the passages, the names of heirs and every figure drawn from them stay on the device in your hands, which is why the ledger opens just as well in a bank vault with no signal as it does at the kitchen table.
You are never registered
The ledger opens straight onto an empty page. There is no sign-up, no password and no profile, and you are never asked for your name, your address, your age or your whereabouts. Device and advertising identifiers go unread.
The papers carry more than the jewellery
A receipt has a card ending and a shop on it. A certificate has a full name. An appraisal has a valuer, a date and a sum. Scanning those into one place is useful precisely because they are detailed, and that detail is the reason they are not sent anywhere.
Scans, photographs and imported PDFs are written into the app's own storage on your device. Nothing is uploaded to be read, recognised, tidied or stored elsewhere, and no page of yours has ever passed through anybody else's machine.
Who gets what is the most private line of all
A bequest names living people. It also, by saying nothing, names the ones who are not receiving anything. That is among the most sensitive things a person ever writes down, and it is kept accordingly: on your device, unread by anyone, and never announced to the people named in it.
Nobody is notified, invited or contacted. The app does not write to anyone on your behalf, now or later, and it holds no instruction to do so after you are gone.
Insurance details
Policy numbers, insurers and sums insured sit on the dossier's cover because that is where an insurer expects them. The dossier itself is assembled on your device, page by page, and no part of it is submitted anywhere. Where it goes afterwards is a decision you make with the share sheet, once.
No prices are looked up
The app does not fetch metal prices, does not consult auction records and does not know what anything of yours is worth. Every figure here is one you or your valuer wrote down. No dealer is contacted, nothing is listed for sale anywhere, and there are no affiliate links tucked into any of it.
Photographs and the camera
Images arrive through the camera you point yourself or the standard iOS picker, so only what you hand over is ever seen by the ledger. The copy is filed against the piece and travels no further.
Nothing borrowed in the code
No analytics package, advertising network, crash reporter or tracking beacon is compiled in. Nothing counts your openings, nothing watches which pieces you look at most, and there is no partner at the far end, because there is no far end.
Heirs who are children
A piece is often set aside for a grandchild of six who will not see it for twenty years. That child's name, age and the words written for them stay on your device like everything else. No record reaches us, so there is none for COPPA, the UK Children's code or comparable rules elsewhere to reach.
Deleting, and one word of caution
Any piece, paper, passage or name can be changed or removed inside the app at any time, and nothing disappears on its own. Deleting Heirloom Ledger takes the whole ledger with it permanently, and nothing is held here to restore from.
Which matters more than usual in this case: a valuation can be done again and a photograph can be taken again, but the year, the town and what somebody said that afternoon cannot. Export the dossier before you clear anything out, and keep the file where the rest of the family papers live.
Backups
With iCloud or computer backups switched on, your ledger may sit inside that encrypted backup — which belongs to you, is controlled by you, and falls under Apple's terms rather than this page. For an archive meant to outlive its owner, that backup is usually the thing worth checking once a year.
If this stops being accurate
Should a later version behave in any way not described above, this page is rewritten before that version reaches the store, and the date at the top moves with it.
Questions
Send them to emecvladislav888@gmail.com.
One keeper of the box, one correspondent
A fault, a hallmark the ledger cannot describe, a kind of paper it will not take, or a story about a piece that finally found its year again. It all arrives in one place.
- Developer
- Siti Maharani
- Reply
- One to two days