When should a collector consider getting an antique appraised? Learn when you should seek professional help on an antique appraisal. That's a good question. Let's say you inherited something from your mother,...
That's a good question. Let's say you inherited something from your mother, father, or grandfather and they happen to have lived in England or France. Let's say they had a nice collection of antiques. In this case, you would want your antiques appraised. If you think you have something of value, if you've come across something that you believe based on its history might have some value, it's worth having an appraisal. If you are a collector and you have acquired a large quantity of a particular type of goods, like for example, old phonographs, then it would be worth having an appraisal for insurance purposes.
Simply for fire and theft purposes, it is always good to have an appraisal for insurance purposes, if you have some nice antiques in your house.
Q: Can you give me an example about an appraisal you guys did, and it turned to be bigger than the owners thought?
Yes. Actually, we looked a piece of artwork from a painter from Louisiana, who is quite famous. For the student part of our program, we allow students to send in items or pictures, and while they are learning about antiques through our course, we will do certain appraisals for them for free. That is included with the price of the course, so that they get an idea of how appraisals are done. They can see the appraisal procedure themselves. Usually, they have something of their own that they want appraised. One of our students showed us this picture of this art work; he said he bought it in an auction sale. It was in a box with a rolling pin and some other kitchen equipment. When he took it out, he saw that it looked old and it was created with oils. The short version of this story is, when he sent it into us we looked at it, and it turned out to be by a fairly well known painter from Louisiana whose pictures were going from between $3000 and $5000 on the open market. So he had done pretty well; he had a good eye. He saw the picture and he unrolled it, and literally even in the shape it was in it was still worth that.
People often find things especially in garage sales, where people are just trying to get rid of things. I can give you another example of a very common occurrence. Often daughters will have inherited things from their grandparents via their mothers, and when they move from one house to another, they have garage sales. Sometimes those inherited jewelry pieces get thrown in with the rest of the jewelry and sometimes that gets mixed in with a kid's jewelry. Sometimes that ends up in the front lawn and it is quite common. The people will come up and buy boxes of jewelry that look like they have kids beads in it, and they will find a diamond ring in it or something like that. Not that it is worth $100,000 but it might worth of a $1000 or so. This is an example of how things are misplaced by people as they move.
