How to Find Out If Something Is Valuable (Step by Step)

The method in brief

Finding out whether something is valuable is a matter of asking the right questions in the right order. First, work out exactly what the object is: the maker, the material, the period, the model. Second, find out what identical or closely similar things have actually sold for recently, not what somebody is asking. Third, adjust for condition and completeness. Fourth, decide whether the answer is confident enough to act on, or whether the stakes are high enough to pay a specialist to confirm it.

Most objects in most houses resolve at the first or second step, and the answer is usually that the piece is worth what a good estate sale would price it at: a fair sum, not a fortune. A small number do not resolve that easily, and those are the ones worth your time. The kit is a phone camera, an inexpensive jeweler's loupe, a small magnet, a tape measure and a notebook.

Start with the object itself

Before you type anything into a search box, look at the thing properly, in good light, from every side. Turn it over. Take the drawers out. Look inside the lid, under the base, on the back, along the rim. Note what it is made of, how it was made, how big it is, what state it is in, and anything printed, stamped, engraved, painted or stuck on. Then ask some simple questions of it:

• Handmade or machine-made? Slight irregularities in a pattern, dovetails that are not all the same width, brush marks in a glaze, small bubbles in glass point to older or hand-finished pieces. Perfect uniformity usually points to a factory.
• Solid or plated, real or imitation? A magnet will not stick to solid gold, silver, brass or copper; if it does, the piece is steel under a coating. Solid wood shows end grain at the edges; veneer shows a thin layer over a different grain. Heavy for its size is often a good sign.
• How was it used? Wear where hands would touch, and none where they would not, is what genuine age looks like. Wear evenly everywhere is what artificial aging looks like.
• Is it complete? A lid, the original box, the key, the booklet, every piece of a set.

Photograph everything, including the marks, before you go further. A clear photograph of a mark is what you will search with and what a dealer or specialist will ask for later.

Find and read the marks

Marks are the fastest route to an answer, because a maker's mark, a pattern number or a signature turns a vague description into a search that returns the right thing. Where to look depends on what you have:

Photograph the mark straight on, in daylight, as close as the phone will focus, then search it as text if you can read it and as a description if you cannot. Marks are widely cataloged, and an evening's reading will usually give you the maker and the rough period. If a mark leads nowhere, that is information too: a great deal of anonymous factory production has no maker anyone cares about. Marks are also copied; a famous mark on a piece of the wrong quality is a warning, not a discovery, and our guide to spotting fakes and reproductions goes through the usual tells.

Search sold prices, not asking prices

This is the step that separates research from wishful thinking. Anyone can list an object at any price, and a great many people list things at prices nobody will ever pay. What an object is worth is what a buyer recently handed over for one like it, and the large online marketplaces let you filter results to show completed and sold listings only. Use that filter every time and ignore the rest.

1. Search with the maker and the pattern or model, not a general description. A search for a pattern name returns the pattern; a search for a color of dish returns everything.
2. Look at ten or twenty sold results, not one. A single high sale can be a mistake, a bidding war between two people, or a piece in far better condition than yours. The middle of the range is your working number.
3. Match the condition and completeness. A boxed, unused example is not a comparable for a used one with a chip. Read the descriptions, not just the titles.
4. Note how many are listed and unsold. If two hundred are for sale and three sold last month, the sold price is optimistic and the piece is common.

A sold price online is what a buyer who wanted that exact thing, anywhere in the country, paid for it. That is close to the top of what your object can fetch, and the ceiling you are measuring against; what it will fetch in a house on a Saturday is lower, for reasons covered below.

Read auction records properly

For anything that might be genuinely valuable, art, antiques, jewelry with significant stones, rare books, coins, the better record is auction results. Auction houses publish their past results, and subscription databases gather them from many houses; a month's subscription is cheap compared with getting a significant piece wrong. The figures need reading with care:

• Hammer price versus total. The hammer price is where the bidding stopped. The buyer also pays a premium on top, and some records show the total while others show the hammer. The seller receives the hammer price less the seller's commission, so the number that matters to you is lower than either.
• Estimates are not results. A catalog estimate is the house's guess before the sale. Look for the realized price, and note when a lot did not sell at all: that is a real result, and it says the estimate was too high.
• Which house, and how long ago? A specialist sale draws different bidders from a general one, and markets move. Weight recent, comparable results most heavily.

If your object appears in auction records at all, that is itself a signal. Ordinary household things do not, and most of what is in a house is ordinary. Finding a close comparable at auction means you have something worth taking seriously, and the guide to estate sales versus auctions explains when a piece should go that route rather than onto a table in the house.

Condition, completeness and provenance

Two identical objects can sell for very different sums, and the difference is nearly always one of three things.

Condition is the big one. A chip, a crack, a repair, a replaced part, a refinished surface, a missing stone: any of these can take a piece from the top of the range to the bottom, or out of the market entirely. Look at your object the way a buyer would, under a bright light, expecting to find something. And note that in many categories original surface matters more than tidiness: refinished furniture is often worth less than the same piece with its worn original finish, and a polished coin is worth less than a dirty one. Until you know what you have, do nothing to it.

Completeness is next: the box, the papers, the keys, the accessories, every piece of a set. A collectible in its box can be worth several times the same thing loose.

Provenance is the documented history of the piece. For most household objects there is none and it does not matter. For art, antiques and anything associated with a known person, a receipt, a letter or an old photograph of the piece in the house can add substantially to the value. Before the house is cleared, look for paperwork that goes with the objects and keep it with them; our guide to documents and personal papers covers what to keep.

What the number actually means for you

Once you have a working figure, understand what kind of figure it is. A sold price online, or a price in an antique shop, is what an end buyer paid after somebody else found, cleaned, photographed, listed and shipped the piece and took the risk that it would not sell. A dealer buying from you will offer a fraction of that, because the difference is their margin and their labor. An estate sale company prices to sell within two or three days to the buyers who walk through the door, so the tag in a sale sits below the online figure too, and commission comes out after that.

None of these is the wrong number; they answer different questions, and our guide to appraisal versus estate sale pricing goes through which applies when. As a rule of thumb: if the sold price of a thing is under about a hundred dollars, selling it yourself is rarely worth more than letting it go in the sale. If it is in the thousands, it deserves a specialist's attention and possibly a different route to market. In between, use judgment, and remember that your time has a value too.

When to pay for an opinion

You do not need an appraiser for most things, and you should not pay for one when a sold-listing search answers the question. But a written opinion from a qualified appraiser, or at least a conversation with a specialist dealer or an auction house, is worth its fee when:

• The research points to a figure that would change what you do. If the answer might be five thousand dollars rather than fifty, confirm it before you sell.
• You cannot identify it, but it still looks like quality. Specialists have seen thousands of these and can often place a piece in minutes.
• The estate needs a formal value. Probate, estate tax, dividing property between heirs, insuring a piece or donating one for a deduction can all call for a written appraisal. Rules vary by state and this is not legal or tax advice; ask the estate's attorney or a tax professional what is needed.
• The family disagrees. A neutral written figure settles arguments that a search on somebody's phone will not.

Many auction houses give free informal opinions from photographs. That is a sensible first stop for a piece you suspect is significant, with one caveat: they are telling you what it might fetch in their room, which is the start of a conversation about selling it there. For a written appraisal, expect to pay by the hour or a flat fee per item, and be wary of anyone who charges a percentage of the value they arrive at, or who offers to buy the piece as part of appraising it. Neither is in your interest. Our guide to valuing antiques and collectibles goes further into choosing an appraiser.

What to do next

If you are facing a whole house rather than one object, you cannot research everything and do not need to. Most of the value sits in a few categories: jewelry, including pieces that look like costume; anything marked sterling or with a gold mark; coins; original art and older prints; signed or labeled furniture; watches, cameras and good tools; boxed toys; and any collection the person kept deliberately, with records. Our guide to overlooked treasures lists the things that get thrown away, and what sells best at estate sales covers what buyers actually pay for. Run the method on those, keep your notes and photographs together, and leave the rest for the sale.

When you are ready to hear from companies who can price the whole house, describe the estate once and local estate sale companies will reach out to you, free. Tell them about the pieces you researched; a company that takes that seriously is a company worth talking to.

Frequently asked questions