Antique value estimator
Show the estimator your antique from a few angles, including any marks. It suggests what the piece is, roughly when it was made, and what similar pieces sell for at auction and on marketplaces.
Example estimate
Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera
$190
Usually sells for $120 – $320
Your result appears here.
How to photograph it
Good photos are the biggest single improvement to an estimate. These are the shots that matter most.
- Take one full shot, then close-ups of marks, labels, signatures and joins.
- Photograph the underside or back, where makers' marks usually are.
- Use daylight. Yellow indoor light hides wood tone and patina.
- Include something for scale, or type the measurements in the details box.
What decides the price
- Maker and marks
- A documented maker or a readable mark can multiply value. Unmarked pieces sell on style and quality alone.
- Age and authenticity
- Period pieces are worth far more than later reproductions. Tool marks, wear patterns and construction tell the difference.
- Condition and originality
- Original finish, hardware and parts matter. Heavy restoration or replaced parts lowers value.
- Current taste
- Demand changes. Brown furniture and formal china have fallen; mid-century and folk art have risen.
What this market actually looks like
The antiques market has been through a long and well-documented correction, and pretending otherwise is the fastest way to be disappointed. Brown furniture, Victorian china, silver-plated serving pieces and the general contents of a mid-century household sell today for a fraction of what they fetched a generation ago, because the houses that displayed them have been replaced by smaller homes with different tastes. Age alone has almost no purchasing power.
What has held up is design, maker and rarity. Signed pieces by recognised makers, items with documented provenance, anything genuinely scarce, and twentieth-century design with a current following all continue to sell well. The pattern is consistent: the market pays for the specific, and ignores the merely old.
Condition in antiques is judged against expectation rather than against perfection. A two-hundred-year-old object is allowed honest wear, and buyers in this field often prefer an untouched surface with its original patina to something that has been cleaned up. Restoration must be disclosed, and over-restoration reliably reduces the price.
Category also decides the venue, which decides the price. A regional saleroom, a specialist auction and a general marketplace will return three different numbers for the same object, and the gap is widest for the items that need an expert audience to be recognised at all. For anything with a maker's mark, where you sell it matters as much as what it is.
How condition is judged here
- Find the marks before anything else
- Maker's marks, hallmarks, factory stamps and signatures sit underneath, on the back, or inside a drawer. A marked piece and an unmarked piece of apparently identical quality are separated by an order of magnitude in price.
- Construction dates the object
- Hand-cut dovetails, irregular saw marks, shrinkage across the grain and oxidised secondary timbers indicate age in furniture. Uniform machine cuts and modern screws indicate a later copy, however convincing the surface looks.
- Patina is not dirt
- The soft depth an old surface develops cannot be recreated and should not be polished off. Buyers in this market discount refinished pieces heavily, which is the reverse of how most sellers assume it works.
- Repairs and replacements
- Replaced handles, re-glued joints, married pieces assembled from two objects and later carving are all detectable and all material. They do not make an item unsellable, but undisclosed they turn a sale into a dispute.
What costs people money
Most of the value lost in this category is lost before the item is listed, by the owner, with good intentions. These are the four that come up most often.
- Refinishing before selling
- Stripping and re-polishing an old surface is the single most expensive mistake in this category, and it cannot be undone.
- Relying on an insurance valuation
- Insurance figures are replacement costs for buying something similar at retail. They are routinely several times what the object would actually sell for.
- Selling a signed piece locally
- The buyer who recognises the maker is not browsing a local marketplace. Items with marks belong at a specialist sale, where the audience knows what it is looking at.
- Assuming a set is worth the sum of its parts
- Large dining suites and full dinner services are harder to sell than single pieces, because few homes have room. Breaking them up often nets more.
When to bring in a professional
A free auction-house valuation is worth getting for anything marked, anything with documented history, and anything where you cannot tell whether it is period or a later copy. Reputable salerooms give estimates without obligation and will tell you honestly when something is not worth entering. For house clearances the sensible order is to have one specialist walk through first, pull the handful of items worth consigning, and only then decide what to do with the rest, because the usual mistake is selling the one good thing in with the furniture.
Common questions
Is an AI estimate the same as an appraisal?
No. A certified appraisal for insurance or estates needs an accredited appraiser who handles the piece. Use the estimate to decide whether a piece is worth that step.
How do I know if it is a reproduction?
Look for even machine cuts, Phillips screws, staples and uniform wear. Real age shows as uneven wear where hands and feet touch.
Where do antiques sell for the most?
Specialist auction houses for high-value pieces; eBay, Etsy and Facebook Marketplace for most items under a few hundred dollars.