Rapp Auktionen

Rapp Auktionen is an auction house, not a shop or a marketplace that resells other dealers' stock: sellers consign jewellery, watches, coins, stamps, designer bags, whisky and decorative art, Rapp's own specialists value each piece, and it then goes either under the hammer at one of Rapp's seasonal sales or straight into the firm's fixed-price online shop. The company traces back to 1970, when Peter Rapp, who had learned the trade at a German auction house and run the Zurich branch of another auctioneer, set up his own firm in Wil SG. He held his first auctions a year later, in 1971, in the buffet of Zurich's main train station, before moving into a permanent auction house of its own in Wil in 1985. Rapp today markets itself as marking 55 years of trading, and the company is still family run, with Peter Rapp's daughter, Marianne Rapp Ohmann, at the helm alongside him. The pedigree runs deeper on the stamp side of the business, where in 2008 the house sold a rare 1850 pale blue Rayon I stamp for CHF 348,000, still the most expensive single Swiss stamp ever auctioned, but it is the same specialist infrastructure that now values and sells rings, watches and estate jewellery.

For anyone newly arrived in Zurich, the geography is worth understanding before you go looking for a shopfront. Rapp's head office, warehouse and most of its valuation team sit in Wil SG, roughly an hour east of Zurich. What the city itself gets is a dedicated office at Fraumünsterstrasse 19 (entrance on Kappelergasse), a short walk off Bahnhofstrasse, where consultations, appraisals and item intake happen specifically on Tuesdays from 14:00 to 18:00, by appointment. That is a narrower window than a daily shop, so a Tuesday is the day to plan around if you want to view a ring in person or bring one in to be valued. Outside that slot, the Wil office runs the more familiar Monday to Friday hours of 09:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 17:00, closed on weekends, with expert consultations there also by prior appointment only. The site runs a full English version alongside German, so an expat who isn't yet fluent can read the auction terms, browse lots and deal with staff in English rather than relying on translation.

One coincidence worth flagging for anyone visiting in person: the Fraumünsterstrasse 19 address is also used by Vintage Jewellery (Hedley Prynn), another dealer covered on this site, in the vintage and estate category rather than this one. Nothing on either company's own pages links the two businesses together, and the far more likely explanation is that the building simply has more than one tenant, but it's worth confirming which company you actually have an appointment with before you turn up.

How buying actually works

Rapp sells vintage and estate rings through two different routes, and which one suits you depends on how much you enjoy waiting for a result. The traditional route is the seasonal auction: Rapp runs a small number of major sales a year, the next scheduled for 2 to 4 June 2026, where jewellery lots go up individually with a published pre-sale estimate and a buyer's premium added on top of the hammer price. A diamond solitaire ring in the spring 2026 jewellery catalogue, lot 4082, carried an estimate of CHF 1,800 to 2,500 and a stated buyer's premium of 25% on the hammer price, a figure spelled out on the lot page itself rather than buried in separate terms. The other route is Rapp Shop Now, a fixed-price online shop stocked from the same consignments, where you buy outright the moment you see something you want, at a published CHF price, with no bidding and no waiting for an auction date. The ring collection alone runs to 60 pieces spread across two pages, from cocktail rings to solitaires, and other Shop Now categories show the same instant-purchase pricing: a CHF 4,800 butterfly collier, a CHF 28,800 Rolex Oyster, a CHF 15,570 Hermès Birkin and a CHF 2,250 antique coin lot were all live examples on the homepage, so the spread runs from modest to serious money, and every price is stated upfront rather than negotiated.

Appraisal, consignment and payout

The Zurich office and its counterparts abroad aren't only there for buyers. Rapp's own jewellery page states that the first assessment and estimate from its specialists is free and non-binding, useful if you've inherited a piece yourself and want an informed second opinion before deciding whether to sell it, keep it or trade it toward something else here. If a consigned piece does sell, Rapp's published payout timeline is 4 to 6 weeks after a successful auction, worth knowing if you're the one selling and counting on the proceeds rather than treating it as a one-off. On results, Rapp's jewellery sales have produced genuinely serious prices: a Van Cleef & Arpels Frivole ring made CHF 10,500 and a Hemmerle "Harmony" bracelet reached CHF 108,750, evidence that the brands passing through this house go well beyond costume jewellery, even if most engagement ring shoppers will be looking at far more modest lots.

Reach beyond Zurich

One detail easy to miss on a first visit to the site: Rapp doesn't only see clients in Switzerland. Its expert home-visit programme runs scheduled consultation days across the country, in Bern, Basel, Lucerne, Schaffhausen and Lugano as well as Wil and Zurich, and further afield in Austria (Vienna, Salzburg, Kitzbühel), Germany (Munich, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Baden-Baden), Luxembourg and Spain (Mallorca, Marbella). For an expat who might relocate again within Europe, or who wants to sell a Zurich-bought ring years later from another country, that's a genuinely useful footprint, and it's presented as a recurring schedule rather than a one-off event.

What stands out, and the trade-off

What sets Rapp apart in this category is transparency: estimates, buyer's premiums, fixed shop prices and payout timelines are all published rather than something you have to ask a specialist to disclose. That matters more for an international buyer than it might for a local one, because it means you can work out roughly what a ring will cost, all in, before you ever pick up the phone. The trade-off is convenience of access. Rapp isn't a Bahnhofstrasse boutique you can wander into on a Wednesday afternoon; the Zurich office keeps to a single weekly appointment slot, and the bulk of the specialist team and inventory sits an hour away in Wil SG. If you want to handle several rings side by side on short notice, this isn't the fastest option in Zurich. If you're comfortable booking ahead, either for a Tuesday appointment or simply browsing Shop Now on your own schedule, it works well.

Who it suits

Rapp suits a buyer who wants a vintage or estate ring with a documented sale history and is happy either bidding at a scheduled auction or buying instantly through Rapp Shop Now at a fixed CHF price. It's a good fit for someone who values seeing the real numbers (estimate, premium, price) before committing, and it's genuinely convenient for anyone who expects to move again within Europe, given the recurring consultation days abroad. It suits less well anyone who wants to compare several rings in person without an appointment, since the Zurich office only opens for that purpose one day a week.

The verdict

For an international buyer in Zurich, Rapp's real strengths are transparency and reach: prices, estimates, buyer's premiums and payout timelines are published rather than negotiated case by case, the site works fully in English, and the same company can still see you at a consultation day elsewhere in Europe if you leave Switzerland. The one real limitation, a Zurich footprint built around a single weekly appointment slot rather than daily opening hours, is a fair trade for a house running consignment auctions across jewellery, watches, coins, stamps, bags and whisky from a Swiss base with 55 years of trading behind it.