Ask three people what an antique is worth and you may get three honest, wildly different answers — because they are answering three different questions. Valuation is not one number. Before any figure is useful you need to know which number you are being given, and most disappointment in this field comes from confusing one with another.
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The four numbers, and which one you actually want
Auction estimate. What a saleroom expects it to fetch under the hammer. Deliberately conservative, because a low estimate that is beaten reads as a success and a high one that is not sells nothing. Your net is lower still, after the seller’s commission.
Retail replacement. What a dealer would charge for a comparable piece in their shop. Reliably the highest of the four, sometimes by three or four times, because it includes the dealer’s expertise, overheads and the convenience of buying something guaranteed.
Insurance value. Usually retail replacement or a little above, because insurers are covering the cost of replacing the object, not the cost of your having sold it.
Probate or fair market value. What it would change hands for between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither under pressure. Sits between auction and retail, and is the figure most valuers mean when they give an unqualified answer.
For most people the honest question is “what would I get if I sold it”, which lands closest to auction estimate minus commission — well below the number anyone hoped for.
What actually drives the number
Condition, above everything. A chip on a rim can cost half the value. A repaired handle, on some pieces, costs nearly all of it. Collectors buy condition first and rarity second; a common object in exceptional condition frequently outsells a rare one that has been knocked about.
Rarity as the market defines it, not as it feels. “I have never seen another” is not rarity — it means you have not been looking in the places where they turn up. Real rarity shows in the auction record: how many have sold, how often, and whether the price holds.
Whether anyone currently wants it. This is the factor owners resist most, and it moves further and faster than the others. Brown furniture — solid Victorian and Edwardian mahogany and oak — has fallen by seventy to ninety per cent since the 1990s. Heavy cut-glass decanters, cased canteens of cutlery, most porcelain figurines: the same story. These objects are not less well made than they were. Fashion moved, and nothing about the object changed at all.
Provenance, where it exists. A documented history lifts value; an undocumented family story does not. Verbal provenance is worth roughly nothing at auction unless something supports it.
Completeness. The original box, the matching lid, the full set, the key to the clock. A tea service missing its sugar bowl is not a tea service.
How our free valuation works
Upload one photograph. The image is resized in your browser, analysed, and then discarded — nothing is stored, no account is required and no email address is asked for. In about ten seconds you get the identification, the period, the category, a condition score out of ten and a note on the object.
The range we work to is realistic secondary-market resale: what the piece would plausibly fetch at a general auction or in a private sale today. Not insurance replacement, and not the headline price a record-breaking example once achieved. The valuation is unlocked in the Antiqly app or through a detailed written report.
What a photograph valuation cannot do
It cannot serve as a formal valuation. Probate, insurance and divorce settlements all require a qualified valuer who inspects the object in person and signs a document they are professionally liable for. No photograph-based tool substitutes for that, and any that claims to should be treated with suspicion.
Nor can it weigh silver, test a hallmark under a loupe, detect a restoration under ultraviolet light, or authenticate a signature. Those need hands and instruments.
What it does well is the triage step: sorting the ordinary from the interesting quickly and at no cost, so you know which of your objects deserves the expense of a proper look.
If the number comes back higher than you expected
Stop cleaning it. More value is destroyed by well-meant cleaning than by any other single act — patina removed from bronze, a surface stripped from oak, silver polished until the engraving softens, a painting wiped with a damp cloth. Every one of those is irreversible, and every one of them costs money.
Photograph it properly, leave it exactly as it is, and get a specialist to look at it before you do anything else.
Related
- Free antique appraisal — the appraisal side, and its limits
- Free antique identifier — name the object before you price it