Jewelers’ Security Alliance (JSA) in the U.S. and Jewellers Vigilance Canada (JVC), two of the leading providers of security advice and services to the jewelry industry, regularly underscore their shared assertion that a jewelry business’s need to have appropriate types and adequate limits of insurance coverage underlies all of their loss-prevention and security recommendations.

The initial gold-buying frenzy may have passed, but many jewelers continue to buy estate and scrap jewelry from consumers on a regular basis.

If you’re one of those who continue to have success with purchasing scrap metals over the counter, know that it’s not without risk. Keep this advice for buying scrap in mind to help make all of your transactions as smooth as possible:

When your business is closed, you depend on your burglar alarm system to notify you of any unauthorized attempt to enter your premises. An alarm condition signal immediately captures your attention and that of others on your call list — as well as that of local law enforcement and your monitoring company, which may dispatch a guard to investigate.

Consider these scenarios and what your response would be:

There’s a belief in the jewelry industry that there’s nothing that can be done to prevent some crimes, especially robberies. Crime statistics and research tell a different story. 

Those facts will tell us that nearly all jewelry crime is preceded by some type of “casing” or surveillance.

After a criminal claim is filed, Jewelers Mutual has found that many policyholders had a feeling something wasn’t right. Maybe there was an unusual car parked across the street or they received an odd phone call.

What they experienced was casing, which is when a criminal stakes out a business for points of vulnerability.

Here are five tips to help you identify the warning signs of casing that could be a prelude to a crime: