Contact.

Email — primary channel.

The primary channel for the baltic amber advisory is electronic mail. Email is read and answered in person by Marcel Querl; there is no secretarial filter and no automated reply. Substantive material — photographs at sufficient resolution, weights, dimensions, family papers, prior correspondence with auction houses — is best sent this way, and is treated in confidence.

Address. info@bernsteinmobil.de

Subject-line guidance. A short and specific subject line speeds up the reply considerably. The convention the advisory finds most useful is Baltic amber inquiry — [your topic], where the topic is one of: SBM identification, SBM authentication, Fischland-Kramer, Bückeburg, designer attribution (Brachert, Holschuh, Koy), inclusion specimen, estate inheritance, museum correspondence, auction-catalogue research. Pre-filled examples follow:

• Baltic amber inquiry — SBM identification
• Baltic amber inquiry — designer attribution
• Baltic amber inquiry — estate inheritance
• Baltic amber inquiry — museum correspondence
• Baltic amber inquiry — auction-catalogue research

WhatsApp — secondary channel.

WhatsApp is available for short messages, photograph previews and the kind of brief exchange that would not warrant a formal email. It is best understood as a continuation of conversation rather than a starting point: substantive enquiries should still begin with an email, and substantive material should still arrive that way.

Number. +49 176 60926047

The advisory does not maintain a separate telephone line for cold calls. Voice calls are arranged by prior agreement, by email, after the matter under discussion has been narrowed sufficiently for the conversation to be useful.

What to include in a first message.

The advisory's reply is more useful where the first message is well-described. The following are the elements that, in correspondence over the last decade, have most often distinguished a productive first exchange from an unproductive one.

A few sentences of context.

How the piece came to its present owner. Inheritance is the usual case; estate-sale acquisitions, gifts and direct purchases occur. Where the piece was kept, who wore it, and any family memory of its origin. Two or three sentences of this kind are worth more than an estimate of value made without them.

One or two general photographs.

At first contact, two photographs in natural daylight — one of the whole piece, one closer view of any silver mount or clasp — are sufficient. Detail photographs of hallmarks, of bead interiors, of inclusions and of construction features can follow once the conversation has narrowed. There is no need to commission professional photography at this stage; a careful telephone photograph against a plain background is enough.

Weight and dimensions, if available.

Weight to the nearest gramme; dimensions to the nearest millimetre or centimetre as appropriate. Both estimations and accurate measurements are useful; the advisory prefers an honest estimate to a guessed precision. Kitchen scales are sufficient at this stage.

What you would like to know.

The advisory's procedure depends substantially on what the owner is asking. Identification (is it amber?), attribution (is it SBM, Kramer, Bückeburg?), valuation indication (what corridor does it fall in?), brokerage (who would buy this?) and conservation (should it be cleaned, repaired, restrung?) are different questions, and a first message that says clearly which of them is being asked is materially more useful than one that does not.

What you do not need to send.

You do not need to send the piece itself; the advisory does not work from physical examination at first contact, and the postal risk is not warranted. You do not need to commission analysis or photography in advance. You do not need to undertake any restoration or cleaning before consulting; the advisory frequently recommends doing nothing for the time being.

Languages.

The advisory corresponds in English and German. Replies in English within forty-eight working hours; German replies usually faster. There is no language preference at the advisory's end, and there is no editorial filter applied to messages written in non-native English: clarity of description matters considerably more than grammatical polish.

Material received in other languages (Russian, Polish, Lithuanian) is normally translated through colleagues in the bernsteinmobil network where the matter warrants the additional step.

About the advisor.

Marcel Querl is a baltic amber advisor and collector based in the Rhineland, active in the field since 2012. He is the German contact point for SBM Königsberg material within the bernsteinmobil network and corresponds in German and English with collectors, auction researchers, museum curators and heirs across Europe, North America, Australia and Israel. Featured in NDR Nordstory, SPIEGEL TV, Die Welt, BILD and WirtschaftsWoche. The advisory's service description is at /en/baltic-amber-appraisals; the institutional background to its principal subject of study is at /en/sbm.