About Antique Appraisals & Appraisers

...and how antique appraisals fit into the BIG PICTURE of how to sell your collectible fine china for the best price possible. You may be a collector, just starting out or very experienced. You may want to sell one or two items to make room, or cash in on an inspired buy. You may have inherited a collection from a relative and you have no idea how to go about getting top dollar prices for the items.

So everyone wants you to part with money just to give you some simple advice, right?

Experts want money. Period. That's the nature of the beast.

The question is: Who is appraising the appraisers? How do you know you are getting what you are paying for?



That's where I come in.

Read my views on how an appraisal service should be run.

Also, read the series of articles in this section (below) to make sure you know how the selling game works and how to realise the best prices and how to deal with appraisers.

Basically, there are two routes. Selling at offline auctions and selling online. The auctioneers might deem to give you an appraisal for free, but you have to get to them in the first place and pledge your item to them. And how do you know they are any good? Read on to find out.

Ebay is always an option, but not always an easy one and so much depends on how you list your item in this complicated merry-go-round. Ebay help is dealt with on another page - just use the in-house search engine on the top right of this page and put in the keywords "ebay help".

'How to Sell Your Collectible China' Antique appraisals and antique appraisers can be quite a formidable arena to get to grips with. We watch TV and think - I'd love to have a chat with an expert like that. Continue reading below ↓

Both online and offline there is a baffling array of would be appraisers trying to get your money off you. But how do you know if they are legitimate and worth their salt?

How can something as simple as just wanting to know the value of your stuff get so complicated (and expensive)? I had a long think about this and on behalf of my site visitors decided to something about it.

The results can be read about this on page called "What is the best online solution to getting my own version of TV's Antiques Roadshow valuations?"

Antique auctions are the breeding ground which spawned most of the TV experts and the online valuers too for that matter. They know a Meissen from a Muppet any day of the week. But with all this comes with a sense of elitism which I don't like.

So someone needs to stand up and be counted (me), to tame these egocentric egg-heads (aka antique appraisers) and render them accessible to us - the ordinary people with antiques collectibles to sort out.

Is there such a thing as a free valuation?

The traditional auction saleroom assessment process aims to give antique appraisals for free. However, as you may have found out, this only really applies when you have a pretty juicy offering for them. Meaning they get the right kind of assurances you are going to eventually place your item with them. They won't be happy just to take a look at your Nan's china and identify it for you, so beware.

So, as consumers, we want china antique appraisals to be accurate, efficient, respectful of our heirlooms (items that might be steeped in sentimental value) and and we want their online reports to be not too expensive either.

We might want to sell antiques, we might just want to know what they are and how much they're worth, but either way, we want to be in the driving seat and make things happen..... preferably FAST!

What to do next....

The pottery mark forum on this site is FREE. It is a giant mutual melting pot (over 2000 pages of easily searchable marks) where visitors place thier queries in the hope someone (including me and my helpers) will know about their stuff and help identify it.

There have been countless long-standing mysteries solved in this section - one grateful lady said her search had taken more than 20 years to solve :0)

However, the mark identification forum doesn't deal very comfortably with values of stuff. It just isn't the right place.

Identification is only one part of the process of vintage and antique appraisals. The other one which rears its ugly head (which we all want to know, even if we say we don't) is value...

Values and other tips about researching are dealt with on the value of antiques and china collectibles page and how eBay helps in finding out your china values.

There is also a book, which I bought on eBay, which I give a mention to here.

However, once you have familiarised yourself with all of the above, you may then look at your item or collection and say the words:-

"Yes, I want to sell my heirloom (but somehow I think it deserves better than an eBay listing)" What do you do if this is your situation? We are going into the realms of proper auction room selling. Real life, not cyber-selling. Exciting stuff. But which collectible and antique auctions salerooms should we use? What are the "must knows" and "don't do's" in this world? In this section are a series of articles on how to sell your items in real-world auction salerooms. Continue to the articles below ↓

Begin with this article, which is the first of the series of 4 :-

Antique Auctions - How To Use Them To Sell Your Heirloom (and Collectible) China

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