Online Antique Appraisal: How to Get a Value from Photos

A photo report, the instant route

RelicLens is our app, and it is the fastest of these by a wide margin. You photograph the piece, or pick a picture already in your library, and the report comes back with a reference value, a low and a high estimate either side of it, a rarity read on five levels, a condition grade on five levels, the likely period, origin and materials, one of eight categories, a written summary and history, and comparable listings that open in your browser.

The comparables are the part worth opening first. They are what makes the range checkable: a figure on its own asks for trust, while a figure with three listings attached invites you to look. Open two, ask whether they are genuinely the same form in the same condition, and you will know within a minute whether the estimate is grounded. Our methodology page sets out exactly how each field in a report is produced.

One full report per device is included at no cost, and nothing is withheld from it. Every report is also saved to a collection with a running total, so a cabinet you work through one piece at a time adds up to a picture of the whole. RelicLens runs on iPhone and iPad and holds 4.6 out of 5 from 56 App Store ratings.

Auction house estimate forms

Most salerooms accept photographs through a form on their own site and reply with a rough estimate. It is free, and for a genuinely good object it is the most valuable free opinion available anywhere, because it comes from somebody who sells that category every month.

Two things make a submission work. Give them everything in one go: clear photographs of the whole piece, the base or back, any mark, and any damage, plus dimensions and whatever you know about where the piece came from. And understand what kind of number you are getting: an auction estimate is what a piece might hammer at, before commission, which is a different figure from what it would cost to replace.

Bear in mind that specialists are reading for saleable lots, so a reply may be a polite pass rather than a figure. That is useful information about where the piece sits in the market, and it arrives faster if your photographs let them decide quickly.

Paid online appraisal services

A number of services connect you to credentialed appraisers through a web form, charge for each item, and send back a written opinion, usually within a few days. What they produce is a document with a stated purpose on it, which is a different product from a market estimate: it exists to be read by an insurer, an executor or a court rather than by you.

When comparing them, look for three things: the appraiser’s credential and whether their specialty matches your object, what the valuation is stated to be for, since resale value and replacement value differ substantially, and whether the report shows the comparables behind the figure. Our page on free antique appraisal options covers how these compare with the routes that cost nothing.

Dealers, specialists and collector communities

Emailing a dealer who specializes in exactly your kind of object works surprisingly often, particularly if you are brief and specific. Attach two good photographs, say what you think it is, and ask one question. Read the reply with the obvious interest in mind: a valuation from someone who would like to buy the piece is real information, and it is also one side of a negotiation.

Collectors’ societies and specialist forums are the quiet success of online identification. The people who collect Depression glass, or Staffordshire figures, or Danish teak, know their field in more detail than any generalist, and they answer for the pleasure of it. They are strongest on identification and weakest on price, since enthusiasts often quote what they would love to pay. Pair a forum identification with your own search of completed sales and you have both halves.

Completed sales records

The strongest free evidence is the completed-listings filter on a large marketplace, because it shows what buyers actually paid rather than what sellers hoped for. The gap between asking prices and sold prices is where most amateur overvaluation happens, and this filter closes it in one click.

What it needs from you is the correct search term, which is precisely what most people lack at the start. This is the reason to run an identification first: with the maker, the pattern name, the form and the period in hand, a search takes a couple of minutes and returns a market. Our guide to how much an antique is worth works through the search technique in detail.

If you searched for an appraisal near you

The valuation question is the one to answer, and you can answer it right now. Someone typing appraisal near me is almost never looking for a street address. They are holding an object, they want to know what it is worth, and a nearby specialist is simply the route they assume they need.

Photographs get you there faster. A report gives you a range, a period, an origin and comparable listings in seconds, and that is enough to settle the decision behind the search: keep it, sell it, insure it, or stop wondering. If the answer comes back high enough to matter, you are then in a much better position to approach a local saleroom, because you can describe the piece in the terms they use and ask about a specific category of sale.

Start with the photograph even when the object is one you cannot easily move. Very large furniture, heavy sculpture and structurally fragile pieces all have to be transported before they can be sold, and a range in hand tells you in advance whether that is worth arranging and roughly what it should be arranged for.

Photographs that work anywhere

Every route on this page reads the same evidence, so one set of photographs serves all of them. Four shots cover almost any object.

• The whole object, three-quarter view. Slightly above eye level, off one corner, so the silhouette and the decorated face appear together. The profile is often what dates a piece, and a straight-on shot throws it away.
• The base or the back. Construction evidence and marks live on the surfaces nobody polishes: the underside of a plate, the back of a case, the inside of a clasp.
• Any mark, label or signature, close up. Get as close as the lens will focus and keep the mark parallel to the sensor so it is not distorted.
• The damage, on purpose. A chip, a crack, a repair or a replaced part included gives you a valuation of your object instead of a flattering valuation of a better one.

Light from a window at roughly forty-five degrees rather than from overhead, since side light is what reveals carving depth, glaze texture and wear. Turn the flash off. Fill the frame. Put pale objects on a dark surface and dark objects on a pale one. Include a coin or a ruler if scale is not obvious, because a miniature and a full-size piece look identical in a photograph with nothing else in it. The step-by-step version is on our page about identifying antiques by photo.

A sensible order to work in

Run the instant route first and let it give you the vocabulary. Then search completed sales using the words it hands you, which either confirms the range or shows you where it sits high or low. If the piece looks significant after those two steps, send it to an auction house form or a specialist, now that you can describe it properly. And if you have several pieces, work through them in one sitting, because the family resemblances between objects from the same household tell you things no single report can.

Related reading

• AI antique appraisal: how it works and what it reads
• Inherited antiques: finding out what they are worth
• Provenance: documenting where a piece came from
• Antique identifier apps compared