Marc Kravit grew up in New York City, the jewelry capital of the world, a destination where, in 1904, his great-grandfather, Joseph, along with his two sons, Benjamin and Louis, emigrated from Russia. Eventually the rest of the family followed Joseph from Russia to join the family business. Upon setting up shop in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the Kravit family immediately established itself as a major player under the name OK Refining Company. Initially focusing on the buying and selling of precious metals and jewelry, the Kravit family eventually added manufacturing and retail components into the equation.

Following a likely progression into his family’s business, Marc began his formal career training after college when he attended the Gemological Institute of America [GIA] in 1975, followed by an apprenticeship to a master Dutch diamond cutter, Nico Swaap, which began his career as a diamond merchant on Manhattan’s famed 47th Street. Utilizing the fundamentals that had been instilled in him by his predecessors and the knowledge that he accumulated during his formative years, Marc founded Kravit Estate Buyers, Inc.

In 1976, Kravit Estate Buyers began hosting estate-purchasing events in hotel venues. During the course of that first year, 21 successful purchasing events were held throughout the Northeast United States and Florida, generating over two million dollars in purchases from the public. The rest is history. With more than thirty years and nearly 1000 events under his belt, Marc Kravit has successfully taken his extensive product knowledge, combined it with a keen marketing knowhow, and parlayed it into the nation’s oldest, largest and most reputable estate buying company.

In 2003, Andrew Kravit, Marc’s son, then a recent graduate of both the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University and the Gemological Institute of America, having already been offered and respectfully declining, the position of Assistant to Sotheby’s Worldwide Director of Jewelry, Gary Schuler (Sotheby’s is the world’s most highly regarded auction house, specializing in jewelry, watches and decorative arts), and having apprenticed under Master Cutter Mates Witriol of the Steinmetz Group (Mr. Witriol cut the Millennium Star, a 203.04 ct D Flawless pear-shaped diamond for DeBeer’s to commemorate the Y2K), made the decision to become the fifth generation of the Kravit family to join the estate buying business.

Now, determined to create synergy between his newly acquired degrees in marketing, international business and gemology, Andrew sought to create a niche within an industry in which his predecessors have been pillars for more than a century.

After all of the formal and practical education that he had amassed, Andrew decided to pursue numismatics, a childhood past time of collecting coins and currency, as a means by which he could add value to the fundamental principles of the family business model and differentiate himself.