I have been gone for a week, and found I had lots of catch up to do. Many good post have pasted my by. But one has made me think hard and felt this one need it own Thread.
In the new to the Board thread it seems the question on value has been raised.
This one is sure to hurt the brain a bit
. " so tell me what is the differnce from the appraisers, experts, sale agents and collectors??who do YOU go to for the real facts???" was the question posted by Syl. Over the past few months that question has been the biggest challenge for me and I assume that challange nevers goes away.
In my opinion, the first questions should always be "What are your needs? Assume you have a item, you have already aquired it so what you payed is history. We all want our money back and we want as much as we can get for it. Are you trying to buy and sell?, Or are we needing to liquidate item we have aquired?, or do we just need to get Insurance Value on the item?".
Buy and sell - This is the risk and the fun, here we need to use all avenues of infromation. Especially our learning, here you need to be as sharp as possible. This is only gained with time. In the beginning you will be wrong alot, but will gain the information necessary to place value.
Liquidation - Here the value is only going to be what two people are will to pay. Here you need what you can of quick information based on what you see is shops and online. Then one sets the value on how quick they need to sell. High Appraisers value I try and determine. Then I place my beginning value somewhere around 50%, for quick sell, 75% as the asking price. Of course we want our money back +. Here if you have a item you payed you may wish to use this as a gauge of how well you did, Personally I have failed more then once here.
Insurance - Here it is simple you want the high appraisal numbers in your favor, but not to high to burst the value bubble.
"I know that even high class appraisers in many many cases are useless right up to blatantly incompetent" Chris quoted in the early post in the thread.
I Agree with Chris here, even had read this in serveral book, Creditials here is important, and gut feelings too. There are many rookie antiquers out there like me who could easy think we can place value on items, impress my friends with this all the time, but I bet that may sucess rate of accuracy is 25%, I would not try that yet but I have just enough information in my head to be dangerous. Meet a appraiser and talk with him ask him about creditials and etc. try to avoid a online or phone etc appraiser. Then the field of Antiques is so broad one would have to spend many liftimes. You need someone who knows about the item you have.
I could write for ever on this subject, and still not cover it all. I say remember most of all True value is only what two people are willing to pay, the rest has to come from experience and lots of investigation and still it is a stab in the dark. If price to high is becomes a antique upon your shelf, If too low then someone else makes some (Not necessary bad as long as you make your money back). Life is alway a Win some lose some reality, just need to win more then you lose as a whole.
You all rock
