Can you value my antique for me?

Every day I receive a few requests for valuations of peoples precious antiques and collectables. As I have mentioned before this is not a service you can expect to have carried out for free.  A proper valuation takes time and research, it is like asking any tradesman to offer their services for free:

•  People wanting a valuation are normally convinced they have a real treasure and they get upset and argue with me over my opinion on the value of their antique or collectable
• A valuation done properly is quite time consuming and the help I offer here free of charge. Valuations and selling of antiques are two different areas of the antiques and I choose to concentrate on selling them and writing about them.

So how can you get your pieces valued?

• If you have a lot of items I would suggest that you contact your local auction house, they normally offer verbal valuations free of charge
• If you just have a small number of items you can research prices similar items have fetched on the internet. eBay is a brilliant source of prices items have fetched over the past couple of weeks and should give a good indication of the value of your antique

How to value an item using eBay:

Use the eBay search facility. Down the left hand side is a check box for completed items. Enter a description of your antique into the search box and  ensure you tick the completed items box.  Once ebay has returned results of the sale prices of similar items you can sort these results in price order by clicking on  priceallong the top row.

For example: A lady wanted to know the price of some 1960s tiles she had. I entered the word “Tile” into the search box and checked the complete items box. This returned hundereds of results and so I narrowed the search by selection only tiles from the antiques category ( this excludes all new carpet tiles, wall and floor tiles).  Now I scrolled down through the pictures until I found some similar to the ones the lady wanted to know more about.

Practice this a few times with items you have around you and you will soon get the hang of being your own antiques valuer.