Vellum Route
A private record of everything you own, and everything you do with it.
Watches, art, cars, handbags, whatever you collect. What you paid, which papers exist, when it was last serviced, whether it is still insured, and what it would take to borrow against it or sell it well.
By invitation. Your numbers are scrambled on your own computer before they reach us, so nobody here can read them.
Photograph by Andreas Strehler, supplied by the manufacture.
Almost nobody has clean records.
Over the last decade I have spent a lot of time around alternative assets: watches, art, cars, handbags, collectables. I have very rarely met anybody with complete, clean details on everything they own.
A vague memory of the price paid. No box and papers. Insurance that lapsed a few months or a few years ago and nobody noticed. And with estates, sometimes no idea of the full inventory at all.
What people do instead is patch something together. A spreadsheet, a folder, a drawer, a dealer who remembers. It holds right up until the day it has to hold, and then it does not.
So I built the simple thing I kept wishing existed: somewhere private to record what you own and what it is doing, and to actually use it when you need to borrow, insure, sell or hand it on.
What it does
Records what you own
What it is, its serial or chassis number, where you got it and what you paid. Skip anything you do not have to hand: Vellum notes what is missing rather than stopping you.
Tells you what is missing
For each kind of thing there are six to eight documents that genuinely matter. Vellum checks which of them you have, and follows your weakest item rather than the average, so it points at the one thing to chase next.
Keeps the service history
Restorations, services, repairs and conservation, recorded against the item as they happen rather than reconstructed from memory years later.
Watches the insurance
What is covered, on what basis, and the date it renews. A lapsed policy is something you normally discover on the one day it matters.
Raises money against it
Send an item to a lender on the panel with the amount, the term and what it is for, bridge finance included. These things are liquid and often rising, which makes them useful long before you sell any of them.
Sells it, or hands it on
When you sell, the whole history goes to the buyer and your details stay behind. For an estate it produces a pack of what exists, what it is, and who to speak to first.
Why you can trust it with this
EUR 50 a year. That buys a record only you can read, and what everybody else's records together can tell you about the market.