How to Spot Fakes and Reproductions at an Estate Sale

What a reproduction is, and why it matters

Most of what is “fake” at an estate sale was never meant to deceive anyone. A reproduction is a piece made later in the style of an earlier one, sold new and honestly as decor, and the deception, if any, happens decades on when a tag says “antique” because the family assumed it was. A fake is a piece made or altered to pass as something it is not, with a false mark, artificial aging or a forged signature. Between the two sit marriages, where parts of two old pieces are joined into one, and restorations heavy enough to make a piece mostly new. All four are worth less than what they imitate, sometimes by a great deal, and all four turn up in ordinary houses.

The good news is that the tools for telling them apart are cheap: a flashlight, a small magnet, a magnifying glass and the habit of looking at the back, the underside and the inside before the front. An object is made a certain way, used a certain way and marked a certain way, and each of those leaves evidence that is difficult to fake all at once. The rest of this guide is about reading that evidence. It will not make anyone an appraiser, but it will keep most people from the common mistakes, and it will tell you when to stop guessing and ask. Our guide to finding out whether something is valuable covers the research that follows.

Start with how it was made

Construction is the hardest thing to fake because it means reproducing a whole way of working, and it is the first thing to look at. A few examples, by material:

Furniture. Pull out a drawer. Hand-cut dovetails are slightly uneven, with scribe lines where the maker marked them; machine dovetails are perfectly regular, and the very even, rounded ones came in with mid-twentieth-century machinery. Look at the underside and the back for saw marks: straight, irregular marks from a hand saw or a pit saw, gently curved marks from a circular saw, which was in wide use by the mid-nineteenth century. Secondary wood, the unseen wood inside drawers and behind backs, should be a cheaper local species, not the same finished hardwood as the front. Screws with off-center slots and uneven threads are old; perfectly machined screws are not, though old furniture is often repaired with new screws, so one screw proves nothing.

Glass. Blown glass has a pontil mark on the base, a rough or ground circle where the rod was broken off, and no mold seams. Mold-blown and pressed glass have seams, and where the seams stop tells you about the mold. Old pressed glass often rings when tapped and has a slight softness to the pattern edges; many reproductions have sharp, crisp edges from new molds and a glassy, uniform brilliance. Colored glass is reproduced heavily, and a color that seems slightly wrong for the pattern often is.

Ceramics. Turn a piece over. The foot rim on an old plate is usually unglazed and shows fine wear from decades of sliding on shelves; a reproduction has a clean, chalky or slick foot. Look at crazing, the fine network of cracks in a glaze: genuine crazing is irregular and often stained by age, while artificial crazing is even and sits on the surface. Transfer-printed patterns on old pieces show tiny gaps and joins where the paper was applied; modern decals are seamless.

Metal. A magnet separates iron and steel from brass, bronze, silver and pewter, which is the single fastest test at a sale. Old cast iron was cast in sand and machined smooth; many reproduction pieces are rough, heavier and thicker, with softer detail because they were cast from a mold taken off an original, which shrinks slightly and blurs. Silver and its marks have a guide of their own: see how to tell sterling silver from silver plate.

Read the wear like a detective

Things wear where they are touched, and only there. A chair’s stretchers wear where feet rested on them, the arms where hands rubbed, the back where it was pushed against a wall. A table’s edge wears where sleeves crossed it, its feet where it was dragged. A tool wears at the grip. A book wears at the corners and the spine. Genuine wear is asymmetrical and makes sense: the left arm of a chair worn more than the right because a right-handed person leaned there for forty years.

Fake wear is applied, and it shows. Distressing done with a chain or a rasp lands evenly across surfaces nobody ever touched, including the undersides. “Antiqued” finishes darken the recesses uniformly instead of the way dirt actually settles. Worm holes drilled with a bit are round and go straight in; real worm holes wander and are seldom in the same plane. A finish that is worn through on the top of a table but perfect on the sharp edges, where wear comes first, has been faked. Look for wear where it should be, and for its absence where it should not.

Patina is the same test for metal and wood. Old brass darkens unevenly and is brighter where hands went; a reproduction dipped in a chemical darkener is even all over, including inside and underneath. Old wood darkens with light and handling, so the inside of a drawer or the underside of a top should be paler and rawer than the outside. A piece that is the same color everywhere, inside and out, was finished all at once, recently.

Marks and signatures: what they prove and what they do not

A mark is the easiest part of an object to fake, because it is small, flat and copied from a photograph. Treat a mark as a claim to be checked against everything else, never as proof on its own. Some things marks can tell you:

• A country of origin stamped in English, such as “Made in Japan” or “Germany,” generally indicates a piece made for export after the 1890s, when such marking became widely required for goods entering the United States. Absence of a mark does not make a piece older; presence of one does put a rough floor on its date.
• The wrong mark for the piece. Every well-known pottery, glasshouse and foundry changed its mark over time, and collectors have charted the sequence. A mark from one decade on a shape or pattern introduced in another is a reproduction, or a piece that has been marked later.
• Fantasy marks. Some reproductions carry marks that no maker ever used but that look old and plausible, complete with crowns, shields and initials. If a mark cannot be found in any reference, that is the answer.
• A mark that is too good. Old impressed marks were struck into damp clay or cast into metal and are slightly soft; a very crisp mark on a piece with an otherwise soft surface has been applied in a different way, and possibly at a different time.
• Removed marks. A ground-off area on a base, sometimes painted over, where a “Made in” mark used to be, is a piece that somebody wanted to look older than it is.

Signatures on paintings, prints and autographed items are marks with the same problems and a larger price attached. A signature on the front of a canvas proves that somebody signed it. Whether that somebody was the artist takes a look at the paint, the canvas, the stretcher and the back, and for anything that would be worth real money if genuine, an opinion from someone who handles that artist’s work. Our guide to selling art from an estate covers how to tell a print from a painting, which is where most of the trouble starts.

The categories most often faked or reproduced

Anything that became valuable was reproduced. The categories below are the ones where a shopper should slow down and a family should be careful in what they write on a tag.

The pattern across all of them is the same. The higher the price of the original, the better the fake, and the less a flashlight can settle. Coins, autographs, fine jewelry, luxury handbags and any painting worth real money if right are categories where an opinion from someone who handles them every day is the only honest answer, and where an estate sale company should say so on the tag rather than guess.

Marriages, restorations and “improvements”

Not every problem is a fake. A marriage is two genuine old pieces joined into one: a bookcase top from one cabinet on a base from another, a lamp base with a shade it never had, a clock movement in a case it did not come in. Each half may be exactly what it looks like and the whole is still worth less than an original, because collectors pay for pieces that have been together from the start. The tell is a mismatch: wood that does not quite match, wear that stops at the join, screw holes that line up with nothing, a top that overhangs its base by an amount no maker would have chosen.

Restoration sits on a scale. A rewired lamp, a re-glued chair and a professionally cleaned painting are ordinary and often add value. A veneered top replaced, a painting extensively repainted or a piece of pottery rebuilt from fragments and repainted are restorations heavy enough that a buyer would want to know. An ultraviolet flashlight, which costs very little, shows the difference on ceramics and paintings: new paint and modern adhesives fluoresce differently from old surfaces, and a repair that is invisible in daylight often glows under the lamp. It is the single most useful tool a shopper can carry into a sale, and one a family can use on the good pieces before tagging them.

The word “improved” is worth worrying about. Painted furniture stripped to the wood, a clock case refinished, silver plate polished through to the base metal, a coin cleaned to shine: each one was done with good intentions and each one reduced what the piece was worth. If you are selling, leave things alone. If you are buying, a refinished piece is an honest thing to buy at a refinished price.

If you are the one selling

For a family, the risk runs the other way. Writing “antique,” “sterling” or an artist’s name on a tag because that is what the family always said is how an innocent mistake becomes an angry buyer, a refund and, occasionally, a claim. A few rules keep a sale honest without needing an expert for every object:

• Describe what you can see, not what you were told. “Oak cabinet, dovetailed drawers” is true. “Antique oak cabinet, circa 1880” is a claim.
• Say “marked” rather than “is.” “Marked sterling” and “signed on the base” describe the object. Whether the mark is right is for the buyer to check, and honest buyers will.
• Say “as found” and “not tested,” and mean it. A company that lets shoppers examine anything with a flashlight and a magnet is a company with nothing to hide.
• Send the doubtful high-value pieces to someone who knows. An hour of an appraiser’s time on the five things that might be worth real money costs less than mispricing one of them in either direction. The guide to appraisal versus estate sale pricing covers when that is worth it.

A good estate sale company does this as a matter of course, and it is a fair thing to ask about before hiring one: how do you describe pieces you are not sure of, and what happens if a buyer disputes a description? The answer tells you a lot about how the company handles everything else. Our guide to warning signs in an estate sale company includes a company that promises everything is genuine among them.

What to do next

Shoppers: carry a flashlight, a magnet and, if you buy ceramics, glass or art, an ultraviolet light, and look underneath before you look at the front. Families: leave the good pieces alone, describe what you can see, and get an opinion on the few that might be worth real money before the sale rather than after.

If you are clearing a house and want a company that handles this properly, describe the estate once and local companies will reach out to you, free. Shoppers can browse upcoming estate sales near you and see the photographs before deciding which are worth a Saturday. For the categories where fakes cost the most, our guides to costume versus fine jewelry and coins and stamps from an estate go deeper.

Frequently asked questions