Your Kids Don’t Want It — But Is It Worth Anything?
In this hour‑long presentation, antique dealer Adam Zimmerman (operating under Silly Antiques and the educational service Antique Help) walks a small audience through the dramatic ways technology has reshaped the antique‑valuation business and offers a step‑by‑step guide for homeowners who need to assess, downsize, and possibly sell inherited or unwanted items. He contrasts the old‑school, paper‑based research methods (e.g., the Benazit Art Book) with modern digital tools such as Google search, Google Lens, 1stDibs, eBay sold listings, and subscription databases, emphasizing both their power and their pitfalls. Zimmerman shares numerous real‑world anecdotes – from a Polaroid‑era house call that required a 90‑minute drive to a modern instant text to a Japanese expert, to a New York super’s $22,000 find, to a mis‑identified Patek Philippe watch – to illustrate how speed, accuracy, and expert verification can make or break a deal. He outlines market trends, highlighting what currently sells (mid‑century modern furniture, Herman Miller/Eames chairs, certain Chinese antiques, precious metals, limited‑edition prints, and collectible memorabilia from the 80s/90s) and what struggles (Victorian brown furniture, most ivory, many collectible figurines, ornate antique paintings, and older pre‑2000 pieces). Legal and ethical red flags are covered, including ivory, tortoiseshell, Native American artifacts, and provenance requirements for Asian antiques. Zimmerman also addresses the emotional and logistical challenges of downsizing, urging owners to have frank conversations with family, avoid “storage for sentimentality,” and use practical decision‑making tools like the “dining‑table‑size” rule. The talk concludes with a detailed tutorial on using eBay’s sold‑item data, QR‑code inventory sheets, and his website’s curated list of free research resources, warning against relying on retail listings (e.g., 1stDibs) and stressing the importance of verifying actual sale prices. The session ends with a call to subscribe and a brief, empathetic exchange with a participant overwhelmed by family‑driven estate cleanup.
Chapters
Technology has changed the antique business a lot. It's amazing. You know, right now we see technology changing with everyone, with everything from cars to phones to TVs. Everything has changed over time. Now I could give you a few examples. My father used to walk into a house and he was kind of the maven. He knew what he was doing, people would listen to him, he would tell them the price, evaluate things. Now, 30 years later when I'm doing this, I walk into a house and they told me, they tell me what things are worth. I saw it on Google, my piece is worth $5,000, I know it.
Right.
Don't tell me any different. And I'm like, okay, sometimes, I'll be honest, they're right. Majority of times they're kind of off a little bit, something's not exactly correct. So Google is great, you just have to know how to use it, and I'm gonna help you with that today to go over a few ways to make you better understand it and use it properly. Has everyone seen some of these antique shows out there?
Oh yeah.
What's some of your favorites? Tell me a couple.
Roadshow.
Roadshow's the big one, you know? I'll tell you, I work with a lot of those guys on the Roadshow, and gals, of course. There's a couple experts I work that are, you know, in art glass and everything, and Asian and collectibles, and they're great people. But I will tell you, they show you on that show the best of the best. They're not gonna show you too much of the other. So what you see on there, if you see a Ming statue and you have a statue in your house that kinda looks like that, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same thing worth $30,000, $40,000. So you have to keep that in mind. And I get that a lot when I'm going in houses too, or they send me a picture. So you need to really remember all of that. Now when it comes to technology, you know, really helping our business, I could give you an example. Back in the day, there was something called a Polaroid camera. Now that was my father's awesome gem, because that means he can go into a house, take a picture of a piece that he didn't know, for example, you know, Asian stuff is tricky, so he'll take a picture of a jade Buddha, let's say, and he'll say, okay, I'll be right back. And then he'd drive to the city quickly from Nassau County, hour, hour and 20 minutes, talk to the expert, yeah, it's worth $5,000, okay, great, then he runs back to Long Island. Tells them what it's worth, hopefully makes a deal, maybe yes, maybe no. Now I could take a picture in a house, I could send it to people all over the state, even internationally. I have a friend that does business in Japan because he sells French art glass, so he's always back and forth because they like that stuff there. I was on a call a few days ago and I wasn't sure if the piece was right because the galet and the dam glass is very, very good and they make really good copies. So I texted him, and from Japan, even though the hours were a little off, he answered my text, and within 2 minutes, I found out that the piece was a fake. My only point is, you couldn't do that years ago. Things happen quick. The problem with that is sometimes people get misinformation from photos. Photos don't, they don't really tell the whole story. So you need to keep that in mind.
Um.
When you look up artwork, I look up artwork all day, it's not an automatic, I know what it is. You have to look these things up. So back in the day, there was something called a Benazit, or Benazit, I forget the pronunciation. Does anyone know, has anyone ever heard the Benazit Art Book? Anyone ever heard of that? Nobody, okay.
Me.
So the Benazit Art Book was basically like, A resource that people would use to find out if you had a listed artist. What's a listed artist? A listed artist is basically an artist that has sold at auction before. There's a listing of them at the auction houses. So if I'm on a house call with my father back then, we would see a painting on the wall, he'd say, it looks good, look up the artist. I'd run to the car, I'd get a book this big that was A through L. And then another book with M, it was M through Z. And I would have to go through the book, find it, you find the artist, you look it up, okay, not even a picture of the artwork, you just say, this is the artist's name, and then this is the numbers that it sold for. Eventually they added some, but my point is, now I could go into a house, I could go into a website on my phone, and I could tell you every painting that that artist sold in the past 30 years, what they sold for, pictures of the painting, multiple pictures of the signatures to match them up. I could do this in seconds on my phone in your house or in anyone's house. And you could do this too, that's the crazy part. You know, some of these sites you do have to pay for, you do have to know how to use them, there's a lot of variables that I'll go over but again I'm just telling you that technology has changed a lot over the years and if you use it properly it could help you and you could figure out things the right way. So, I'm gonna get started. Again, my company is Silly Antiques, named after my grandparents Sylvia and Lee. The new company that I'm talking about today and explaining to you is Antique Help, which is absolutely that, just help. We just wanna help you, we don't need to do any transactions, this is just try to educate you so you understand what you have. Whether you wanna give pieces to your kids, your grandkids, or you wanna tell them, you know, this piece is worth $3,000. Do you want the cash or do you want the piece? Let me know honestly. Because I can tell you from experience, the worst thing you could do is give the responsibility to your kids or your grandkids to make the call on these items. Because they might keep it just because they feel bad. Or they might dump it just because they don't need it. It's better to find out early so you can kind of figure out what the next steps are. And I know it's tricky, it's difficult conversations because some of you, you've got to talk to your parents. some of you talking to the kids, I'm talking to everybody. Have the difficult conversations because the later it gets, the harder it gets, okay? I'm gonna start by telling you a super story. Not super like amazing, but the story about the super of a building. I get a call from a guy in Manhattan, he's a super of a building, and they call me every now and then because The apartments in the city, if they're left by someone who passes away and the kids don't want the stuff, he calls me before they junk it, just to make sure they're not throwing anything good out. Most of the time I'll find 1 or 2 pieces or none. They're just trying to do their due diligence for themselves. If they're doing the clean-out and it's theirs anyway, they might as well get a couple bucks for it. So I go to this house in the city, Upper East Side, this apartment, and I start looking around, and I wasn't expecting much. Sure enough, There was some silver mixed in with the silver plate, there was some sterling, there was some jewelry, costume mixed with gold, there was some artwork, there was some china, there was so much stuff there. I spent $22,000 with that super. Of course, he was super happy. But I could give the money to them and it's great, he's happy. I would much rather have given it to the son in that scenario who left the stuff there. And when you become the executor of a property, and that's what he was, he was an only child, so he was the one in charge of everything. He didn't have to answer to siblings, and he just made the call. He's like, I have to work, I have my own family, I don't have time to go. I went there— he went there quick, found a couple things, and just left the stuff there. He left $22,000 on the table just so he didn't have to pay $2,000 a month rent to keep the place. So again, that's his priority. Maybe he had too much stuff going on, but I'm going to try to help you today so that you don't do that. You know, you can make a call to a specialist, you could look stuff up yourself, but I'll tell you things to look at so you don't make the same mistake that he did. Downsizing isn't easy. We can help you make it doable. So, put it simple enough, we don't all have houses that big, but I could tell you that's like an Oyster Bay Cove or Brookville house, and they will move to, let's say, Florida. Maybe they're gonna go to North Shore Towers, you know, whatever it is, we all are gonna downsize somewhere in our life, probably. And when you do that, you can't take everything with you. When you have a house like this, or just a high ranch, and you have some extra space, your kids, your family, they tend to put stuff in your house. You end up being storage for everyone because they know you have the space. So when you move from here to here, you have to really figure out what's the most important thing to you. What do you want to keep? And I'm going to try to help you figure out how to know what to keep and whatnot. And also, I have a few things, again, on my website that could help you figure out books. Books on downsizing, books on antiques, but also books on organizing. You know, because that's a lot of it. Books on sentimentality, books on moving. So again, you go to my site, it'll explain that. But it's very important because sentimentality gets in the way. You can't get anything done. And I've been there, my father passed, I had to do it myself, and it was tough. But, you know, it has to be done, and by reading my book and looking at the website, I'm hoping that, you know, it's not as difficult a process as it can be. This is me in action. I was in the city in an apartment. They had a bunch of things including a trunk. And this trunk, can anyone tell me what it is?
Louis Vuitton.
So this was basically luggage 100 years ago, 120 years ago. This was the steamship type luggage that you would have. So right now, I don't see too many people at JFK running with this thing around because it takes up a lot of space, and these days I think the lack of wheels would make us probably not want to go this route. But can anyone guess what they would use this for now?
Storage.
Storage, maybe, but you can get a cedar chest for $50. This is an $8,000 piece. They make a bar out of it, they turn it on the side, maybe? They have made bars out of it. In general, what they do is they put a glass-top coffee table. And they could sell them in perfect condition, and this one needed a little work, $8,000 to $12,000. I actually sent this picture to a friend of mine in Maine whose specialty is just hard Louis Vuitton luggage. That's it. And he's in Maine and he's great and he fixes them and he does everything, but my point is, again, I was on the house through the picture and that was it. And, you know, this was a trunk, they didn't think much of it, they thought it was storage, you know, but in reality there's some money there. Prepare to let go. Now again, this is what we spoke about earlier, it's not easy, have the difficult conversations, be ready to let go. One of the books that I read which I mentioned, that's, I mentioned it in mine but it's a little bit more detailed in another book, the gentleman from A book called Let It Go, actually, said that one idea was to have a dining room table. You can only take with you what you could fit on that dining room table, and that's it.
That's tough.
I know it's tough, but I could tell you storage is a bad idea. If you're gonna store for 6 months, okay, do it for 6 months. You're in limbo, maybe your house is being built, being fixed, so you have to close, that's okay. But in general, you need to let stuff go. I'll tell you a 2-second, 2-minute story real quick. I went to a house in the Five Towns. They had a storage unit full of stuff, really good Chinese antique furniture. I called my specialist in, we went in there, we spent $25,000 on the contents. And it was simple, we just took the lock off, put our lock on it, put the name in ours, and that was it, $25 grand. Reason it's important is because there was no smile on their faces. They spent over $25,000 in storage over 10 years. It was an expensive unit, the father just said, don't let it go, don't let it go, it's great stuff. It was great stuff, but they sat on it, they didn't let it go, it sat in storage forever. So you need to really, if you're using it, if you're displaying it in your house, I don't want you to sell it. But if you're moving, you're not gonna use it, I'm sentimental too, I understand that, but within reason. You have to pick and choose your battles, most important, You need to save. Now of course in that story with the dining room table, I started thinking about putting stuff, stacking it up to the ceiling, getting an extension, but in reality you get the point. You gotta really prioritize. For those of you who were here last time, I did mention this story, but again it's important and it's kind of a funny story, so don't wait too long, he who hesitates is lost. I go into a house in Roslyn, And immediately I knew it was gonna be a tough one. The lady said, my father was there 20 years ago and offered her $10,000 for a bunch of items. So I go into the basement, I'm a little nervous because she has such high expectations. She's expecting more money because of course it's gonna go up, you know, years go on, it goes up. It was a bunch of ivory figurines. Big ones, small ones, beautifully carved, antique ones, I told her I don't want them at any price. If they find that in my gallery in the city, it's a $10,000 fine. Now I can go back and forth, I could actually give you an hour speech on this subject, but I'll tell you it does not matter if it's 300 years old anymore. Ivory's ivory, there's too many, you know, things to have to deal with. You have to get licenses, certificates, and then if you put it at auction, you know, it's just— there's a chance it could get confiscated. It's a no-no. I don't want it for anything. So I told her, and of course I do this for a living, I didn't tell her rough, I just said, listen, I'm sorry, they're beautiful items, I just can't use them at this time. And I asked her, how come you didn't sell it back then? She said, I was sure my son would love the items and take them. It wasn't taking up much space, she didn't take the storage unit, so she said, what's the harm? The son absolutely did not care or want them, and then when she asked, that was it, she had to move and let them go, and I to this day don't know what she did with them, but— You know, the point is you gotta talk to your kids, make sure they want it, don't push it on them if they don't. The biggest misconception about antiques is what I just said. Older it gets does not mean the more valuable it becomes. So if you have a piece of furniture that's from the, you know, 1900s and, you know, you think 100, 150 years goes by, it's gonna go up, it's not. '80s and '90s was very good for the market, and up till about 2000 that was true. The market was like this, but then the kids stopped appreciating the smaller things the kids didn't want, and it kinda hurt the market. And, you know, and that's really when it started to go down, and it continues to go down today. A lot of things that I used to spend hundreds, if not thousands, on are donation now. You know, I'll tell you again a 2-minute story just 'cause, you know, it's important. I had a client in Tribeca, they had a table from the early 19th century, I think it was 1820, they bought it at a major auction house in the city for $25,000 in the '80s. I tried, it would've cost $1,000 to move it and the piece was worth about $1,500. She ended up donating it and getting a tax write-off. Over $20,000, doesn't matter. And you call the auction house that sold it to 'em, they're like, we don't want that anymore. But you sold it to me. Doesn't matter, market is what the market is. Okay, what's hot, what's not? What's hot? Mid-century modern furniture. I have 2 of those chairs right now in my showroom, and everyone loves those chairs. You know, it's very popular now. It's the Herman Miller Eames, and it's iconic. Everyone loves these chairs. They're super comfortable. They still make them today. So it doesn't have to be antique. I've had the old ones from the '60s, and then I've had the new ones from the 2000s. They're all desirable. They have the same look and it's the same company. A lot of times my clients would rather the old ones, but then comes wear and tear. So it just depends what you like, but that look is great. And just to reiterate, it's easier to sell 1950s mid-century modern furniture than it is the antique stuff from the 1850s. I repeat, easier to sell 1950s, 1970s even, than the 1850s, 1870s. I just bought a table in the Hamptons, they were about to donate it, and it was a $5,000 La Verne table.
Oh.
This table was maybe 60 years old, but it's a good name and it's from the good time period. Now, precious metals, gold and silver. I gave this speech, or a speech, maybe 3, 4 months ago, gold went up $300. Silver probably went up $3 or $4. So gold and silver's hot. The thing about it is, even though it's hot, I'm gonna be honest with you, a lot of the stuff gets melted. It becomes a commodity. It's just too high. We were talking about it earlier with the coins, you know? A Krugerrand, you know, you used to get a premium for, but now it's just so expensive, it's hard to sell 'em. You know, Morgan silver dollars, unless it's in really good graded condition, it becomes metal for a lot of situations. And it's the same thing with a flatware set like this. You know, it's a beautiful flatware set in a beautiful case, sterling, service for 12. It's awesome. The price of the silver outweighed the demand for the actual item. You know, a set of 12 these days is usually, I would say, between $1,200 on the low side up to about $3,000 depending on serving pieces and 100 other things. Is it a service for 6, service for 8? Service for 12 is ideal, but is it a place setting, I should say, for 5, 6, 7, 8? Because the more pieces, of course, the more expensive, the more serving pieces, and so on and so forth. Listed artist artwork. People are not gonna buy artwork because it looks pretty for $10,000, but if it's an investment, a listed artist like we were talking about earlier, something that they think will go up in value, then it could be worth some money. But they're not gonna buy for fun anymore, very rarely. You know, you can't justify it like you could in the '80s and '90s where money was everywhere and people said, yeah, I could spend 20 grand, it looks nice, it goes up, it goes down, I don't care. Now people are a little bit more careful. Chinese antiques. Now I say Chinese, not Asian. The Japanese market is very soft. So Chinese stuff like coral, amber, Chinese porcelain, these things are saleable. They have to be old. Majority of stuff that I see is not old. It looks old, it was told, it was said to be old, but it's not. So these things are not as saleable unless it's old, and if it is, the Chinese will buy it. From China, I sell this stuff back to China. The stuff that they sold to us 100 years ago, they're buying it back. And if their neighbor wants it and they want it, you put it at auction, they will fight for it. So the Chinese stuff, you could get lucky for, but again, it's very, very seldom. A lot of the stuff is reproductions mass-produced in the '70s, '80s, '90s. Collectible memorabilia. So when it comes to collectible memorabilia, it's a tricky one. I'm not saying collectible figurines, we're gonna go over that after. People my age, in their 40s, 50s, you know, they like stuff from when they were kids. Stuff from the, you know, '80s and '90s. Comic books, if they're earlier than that, are a little bit more important. Baseball cards, some of the ones even now are expensive, but they have to be graded. Condition is everything. Now I'm gonna show you something that's pretty cool. This is a $1,000 bill. It's worth something, but because it's graded by PCGS Now this means it's definitely authenticated, real, and it has a grade on it. Now this becomes almost like it'll go upwards in value. It'll be like the chart that you wanted before because it's collectible, they're not making them anymore, people like them, and it's just pretty cool to have a $1,000 bill. But again, if it didn't have the grade on it, it would make it a lot more complicated. Collectible figurines are not Hot. So for the resale market, what's hot and what's not? This is the, you know, this tells the whole story. My father, back in the day, took a full-page ad and spent a lot of money back maybe in the '80s for Hummels. Full-page ad. I don't wanna tell you what my people tell me 'cause you'll get upset.
I'm surprised.
Target practice, I'll just tell you. That's what they tell me. And it hurts because I remember as a kid when these things were so valuable. But that's what it is right now. The kids do not care. Their kids are knocking them over. The pets are knocking them over. Used to be a great present. Since World War II, they would bring them back from Germany, but nowadays all the collectible figurines, that's Hummels, Daltons, Jadros, Copenhagen's, a little bit of the exception would be the Meissen figurines, but in general, it's very hard to sell the collectible figurines. A piece like this maybe was $75 at its peak. Right now it's about $5. So what do you do with all those figurines? Sometimes, and I don't really buy them too much anymore, but if they were full bees and the bigger ones, umbrella girl, umbrella boy, they're still worth something. So what some people do is they put them on eBay 10 at a time, 20 at a time, and they sell them like that. So maybe you'll get a couple bucks for them. Antique brown furniture, like we keep saying, I mentioned it multiple times because that's the hardest market. Mahogany and oak is no good. Back in the day it was great, you can get a lot of money for these things, the antique 19th century, the ornate stuff was great. Now people do not want ornate big stuff. You gotta treat it almost like a Manhattan apartment, every square foot of space is good. When you go to sell your house, they want everything taken out that's not necessary because the house looks bigger. So the breakfronts, the curio cabinets, they're gone, you know? It just doesn't make sense anymore. What's the point of having a breakfront? full of stuff that you're not gonna ever use. It looks nice in the breakfront, but you've never used it. And the mentality that used to be is everyone needs to have grandma's set of dishes. It was great-grandma's, it's grandma's. There was an article in the Times that I spoke about the other day, it's on my website, and that's what it was. It went through 4 generations and now it's stopped because the kids, they just don't appreciate it, they don't want it. Why are the dishes the hardest to sell? 2 of the big reasons, and you might know 'cause you were here last time, do you remember? What do you got? Emotional attachment. Emotional is a little bit of it, but you have to realize it's a lazy generation, and the dishwasher is not the appropriate place for these dishes. Yeah, 100%, and that's what happens. The gold comes off a lot of times. The gold in there doesn't make it through the dishwasher.
For $85, I go, my, I could kill you like that.
100%. And the other thing—
How about mid-century modern dishes?
So some of the mid-century dishes are good. There's some Italian designers that make it. It's a case-by-case. If it has the look, the modern look, you got a shot. You know, we could sell them sometimes. The barware, I'll tell you, is really good. When it comes to '50s barware, That came back. If it's got gold on it, the barware, like Mad Men. Everyone seen Mad Men? Some of you seen Mad Men, you know the show? If you have barware that looks like Mad Men, we sell it like crazy. But not the dishes for the dining room table. And the other reason, obviously, for the dishes, you put that stuff in the microwave, it's gonna explode. So you do not wanna do that. Antique paintings with the ornate frames. Again, it's like we mentioned before, less is more. I've seen paintings come as much as 8 inches off the wall because of the ornate paintings. These days they don't want that. They want sleek, flat paintings, you know. I shouldn't say flat paintings, a lot of lithos is what I mean, prints. Limited edition prints are a great investment because if you have a low edition like 1 of 10, 1 of 5, that'll keep going up if it's a blue chip artist, you're good. But if it's not that, if it's just a really nice antique painting, you know, I've heard the saying 1,000 times, the frame is worth more than what you're offering me. It used to be. I have a gentleman I work with in Jersey, his entire business was antique framing. Went out of business 15 years ago, had to re-change his whole business model. So he still helps some people out when they need it, but people used to spend thousands on frames for their 6-figure paintings. Now it's just, it's not a thing anymore. So, and again, the antique paintings, I'll tell you a few things, like if you have landscapes, used to be good, people don't want it.
Courting scene.
It's kind of boring. People don't like courting scenes anymore. It used to be great, it's a loved one, a gentleman and a woman, they're, you know, courting each other. When it comes to that now, it's just not in demand. I think a few things that are in demand, anything that's— and this is going to be like a real polar situation, but anything cute with like kids or animals, people tend to like that when it comes to oil paintings, or erotic. So, people like nudes, something like that, that still could be saleable. But everything in the middle is kinda lost. You know, there are always exceptions, and there's exceptions to everything, but in general, if it's not a listed artist, you know, the antique paintings are gonna be tough. And like we spoke about before, the exotic animal products, so things like ivory, tortoiseshell, Native American jewelry has bear claw, that's illegal. I was in a home in Roslyn the other day, and they had like a headrest, the, an Indian chief, Headrest and the thing was filled with feathers. Totally illegal. When times were good, it could have been a $50,000 piece, but now absolutely negative. I sent it to an expert, they said, delete my number. You could go to jail. It was bald eagle feathers. It was a big, big problem. Items you cannot research. So now this is gonna be kind of the the meat of the presentation because this is gonna hopefully help you look some things up. And again, this is on my website, you could look at my YouTube channel and you could get a lot of this. Items you cannot research. Asian antiques. You can get an idea by looking things up and Googling them, but it's just an idea. This thing, I did it on purpose, this is a stock photo. This is probably worth $5. If it was a couple hundred years older, it would look similar to someone who's not in the business, and it could be worth $20,000, $30,000. It will look very similar. So it's not something that you could, you know, kinda look up yourself. You need some help with the Asian antiques. The Chinese are amazing at making reproductions. They age the items. You know what they used to do with ivory when times were good is they would dip it in tea to make it look older. So they kill an elephant, it's white, white, white, and they dip it in tea, make it look yellow and old, and they say, okay, it's old. When it comes to porcelain, you know, they rub them, they put it in sun, they do different things to make it look old. Same thing with the Chinese furniture. So it's very difficult to research Asian antiques. Pre-Columbian and ancient items, you know, it's the same thing. They all look the same, you know, and it's very hard to tell that unless an expert feels it in their hands. Sometimes you can do it from pictures, but the expert needs to see that. I've been doing this a long time and the ancient stuff is still very difficult for me. There's a couple little tricks that people have told me over the years. One of the things, if, you know, if you lick your hand and you touch the piece, the ancient pieces are supposed to soak up the liquid so quick that it dries immediately. And that's like a little trick. And if it doesn't and it stays wet, then it's probably not a couple hundred years old or thousands of years old. So that's a couple tricks like that, but even if you can do all that, And you figure out, yes, I know it's old, I got it. You have to prove that it's been in the country a certain amount of times or it will be confiscated when it comes to auction. They say it's been stolen from temples, or they say it's been taken, and you have to have proof that it got here in time. I'll tell you again a 2-second story just because it's right here in Seaford. There was a woman who had an older— it was actually a Southeast Asian figure, and it's the same rules. You have to prove that it's been here a certain amount of time the auctions wouldn't touch it. She had a picture, and she was in her 60s at the time, she had a picture when she was a kid date-stamped in Seaford with the piece. The auction took it, $180,000 she got for it. Without that picture, without that proof that it's been in the country a certain amount of time, there's a good chance it will be confiscated and you can't really sell it. Artwork preliminary research is okay, you can get an idea if your artwork is a listed artist, you can find out if it's saleable, however, Is it a print? That's hard for you to know. Is it a watercolor, acrylic, oil? Is it on canvas? Is it on paper? These are all things that are very hard to know if you haven't looked at 100 of these in your life. So you can get preliminary research done, but I don't know if you could figure out the whole thing without calling an appraiser, an expert, or an art gallery person. Precious metal pre-weigh-in. So, You could look up gold pieces and silver pieces, but, you know, in reality you gotta weigh it. You know, like I said, with a flatware set like this, you have to figure out the weight. I'm gonna show you an example. 18-karat, marked 750, N Italy. I bought this in Merrick. Absolutely 110% fake. What?
No.
If this was real, you're talking about maybe 3 grand, 4 grand. Absolutely fake. Now I've been doing this a long time, I could tell before even looking at it, but as a backup, there's an acid test. Now I might tell you how to research your items, I'm not gonna tell you to play with muriatic and biotic acid. It's just not a safe thing to do. Leave that to the professionals, whether it's your jeweler or someone you know. These things are things that need to be brought to an expert to get the final say. You can get an idea, You know, if you look this up, you might be able to figure out a ballpark number from comps, but is it real? What does it weigh? And even, and let's say this was real. If this was real, I would simply put it on the scale because all the money would be in that. Okay? So you could do a little bit of research. Now, this is a flatware set like I mentioned before. When I weigh this, can anyone tell me why I don't weigh the knives? Yes, sir?
You're stealing them.
Correct. So what happens is, you know, if you're trying to figure it out yourself, you could try, okay, we throw it on the scale, we figure out what it weighs. What's the problem? You have to weigh it in troy ounces. You can't weigh it in regular ounces. You have to know that these are weighted. which means this is stainless steel. It's not silver, you can't put it on a scale. Inside here is weight, which means it could be wax, it could be sand, it could be anything. They do that not because they're trying to save money, like I always say. They're doing it because it feels better in your hand and it's just easier to work with. This here, you cannot put this on the scale. It is weighted. If you look underneath and you see this, it's gonna say weighted. Even if it doesn't say anything, when it's covered like that, usually it's weighted. If it's hollow, You could weigh the whole thing. So this is not something you could research yourself. You can get an idea, but you have to be careful. Now, researching your antique's value, how not to do it. If you, like we said before, Google an item to see the value, the first thing that's gonna come up is going to be the retail numbers. The retail because they're trying to sell it to you. What does Google get from trying to market pieces to you that aren't, that aren't saleable, that they're not being sold. So if they're trying to sell it to you, this is a retail number. So I get a lot of people call me, I saw my chair on 1stdibs for $10,000, so it's gotta be worth close to $10,000. The problem is 1stdibs is a very, very high retail site, so high that that's the first thing you're gonna see when you look it up. So it's a little confusing, but just to give you an idea on the numbers, that $10,000 chair on 1st Dibs will be discounted 20 to 30% for a designer decorator or basically anyone. After that, 1st Dibs takes money. So the dealer selling it for $10,000 will maybe get $4,000 to $5,000 in their pocket, and it's a generalization, everything changes. And on top of that, it could take 6 months to a year. So if that dealer's gonna come to your house to buy that chair, that's $10,000 on first dibs, they might give you 1 to 2 because of all those variables. So just keep that in mind when you look things up. Retail sites are not the way to go. Google Lens can be misleading. What's Google Lens?
You take a picture.
Correct, you take a picture. And it's gonna show you something close to your item. It'll show you something that looks very similar. Is it? Maybe, maybe not. I honestly think that this is awesome. It's a great idea, it's amazing. When I first started using it, and I still use it, I was— it's magic, it's basically magic. So the way it works is you take a picture or a picture from your files, right? You look it up in Google Lens and it will show you the same piece with a description of it. It is awesome. However, it can be misleading. I had a customer in Manhattan send in this exact picture, and I could tell it was a stock picture. I could tell it was at the major auction house, as you can see. Does anyone know what a Patek Philippe watch is?
I do.
Has anyone heard the name?
Yes.
For those of you who, most of you have, it's basically one step or maybe a couple steps depending on the model above Rolex. It's a great model. So this was an early 20th century, around 1908 I think it says, Sotheby's watch. And she says, I have the same one. Google Lens told me I have that watch, that's what's in my house, what can you pay me? And I said, I need to see it in person, is the movement, is this and that? And she's like, no, no, no, that's the right thing, you know, you can come over. So my sister goes over take a look to see what's what. $26,000 Sotheby's asking price is that watch that she said that she had the same one. This picture is a little blurry, but you'll get the gist. Patek Philippe, says it on it. Now, can anyone read that?
Quartz.
Quartz. It says quartz. Did they have quartz, which means battery, in 1908?
No.
No, they did not. So that's a pretty big red flag that Google Lens didn't pick up. Now again, I'm telling you this now, the technology is so crazy, by tomorrow they could correct this and everything's gonna be perfect and you could look up your piece, you're gonna find the exact same piece, what's the proper— it's not there yet, but it might be eventually. So that says quartz. Now, my sister sent me the next picture. Made in Hong Kong. So Google Lens says $26,000, I say about $10. This lady had a lot of expensive stuff, so it was very hard to know what's what. But once I see that picture or anything that's, you know, similar to auction site, that means that people use the comps. Sometimes it's on point 100%. I'm not gonna say it's It's incorrect all the time, but you just gotta know how to use these things a little bit better. This is how to do it better. You research by using auction results, okay? I don't care what people are asking. I wanna know what actually sold. Now this is a barcode to to the site and it's gonna give you a bunch of eBay information. eBay is an auction site. You don't have to go to the big auction sites, you can go to eBay. How much does it cost to look at something on eBay? It's absolutely free. You don't have to pay for it. I have multiple sites that I pay for that I use because I do this every day and I need to, multiple. EBay is absolutely free. So here is the kicker. Now this is important because this is gonna go to my website page and you're gonna have all the information you need to check out how to research on eBay because this is a big part of this presentation and it's very, very, it's a little technical but I wanna make sure that we go over it. You have to go there, it'll go over, number one, it'll go over pictures so you can see how to do it. 2 videos, so I show how to do it, and a long essay about how to do it. This is what I'm trying to say. When you look something up on eBay, it's gonna show you what they are asking. So the first thing you need to do is look for sold items. I don't care if someone's asking $10,000. They could ask $10,000 for the rest of their life. Anyone know what CorningWare is?
No. Yes.
About 7, 8 years ago, I got a call from the Observer website magazine online. It was a cool website that they kinda give information to people. They go over like current fads. They called me up, they said, what do you think about the current trend of CorningWare selling for tens of thousands of dollars? And I told them it's absolute— it's absolutely incorrect. I didn't wanna curse, I cut myself off. But basically, it's absolutely not true. What people were doing, they were asking $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 on eBay, so people said, oh, I'm gonna pay $5,000 and make some money, and it was a big mess. People could ask, to this day they're still asking that kind of amount. People can ask anything they want for their items. You need to look up what it sold for, and that's not the end. This is where it gets even more complicated. You have to see multiple bids on that item. So if you see sold but there's no bids on it, I don't count that result. That is not correct. They could ask $5,000, take the best offer of $300, and you will never know the difference. To this day, until they fix it, they haven't yet, eBay will not tell you what it actually sold for. Even if it doesn't say best offer, it could say nothing. It could be green, looks sold, seems like it's sold, totally not correct. You need to see multiple bids on it or I will not count it.
$3,000.
You see right here, this is a Lalique Bachanti vase. You look it up on eBay right now, someone's gonna ask $5,000. Someone else is gonna ask $4,000. You look up sold items, and then you're still gonna see $2,000 to $3,000, $2,000 to $4,000, $3,000 to $5,000, $6,000, $8,000. Realistically, that vase will sell on eBay between $1,300 and $1,600. That's the price. So if I'm gonna buy that piece, I'm gonna buy it for around a grand and take a shot depending on condition. But eBay tells my clients it's worth $3,000 to $5,000. So you need to check sold items. If you do that, you will find out what the value of half the things on your— in your house are without calling anybody to help you. Get fairly compensated formula. If you are moving or if you're just trying to itemize some things on your list, This is the barcode, the QR code. You could download this and it will just give you just a way to get organized. You say what items that you have, decorative art, precious metal, you list it and then the average resale price. Now eBay's a free one. There's a couple other sites. Again, you go to my sites and you could find a few other websites and apps that are good to use as research. I used eBay because I don't want you to have to pay for anything. eBay's free. There's a couple other sites you could use that are free as well, and I listed them because there's just too many. But if you go to my website, antiquehelp.com, there's a list of a lot of ways to help you. And then you complete the sale and you let go of the items. Now, I mentioned a lot of stuff here. The final process is important because I have been doing this a long time, and people sometimes have seller's remorse. Before you get to this point, you need to make sure that you're ready to let these items go, because if you're gonna regret it or lose sleep over it, you might wanna wait a day before you pull the trigger and make the decision. So any questions related to anything I have on this list before I finish up?
Yes, ma'am.
No, no, I hear you.
My mother, like I said, I'm going through a lot of I went to therapy because of this, because my mother had me pay for a fortune to wrap everything up. I lost almost 40 pounds to wrap everything up in that house, pack everything, pay for storage, pay for everything in that house. My mother had a gorgeous, gorgeous break room.
As big, like yeah, they get big.
Everything I had to do everything for my mother because I was the good daughter. Okay, and excuse my French, and she fucked me royally. Okay, the niece that she hated, hated, she gave everything to. My mother pulled the carpet out. under me and she screwed me. And I did everything for this woman. So people, get rid of your breakfronts. Get rid of everything that's inside of there. Listen to this man. Get rid of everything. Do it now. Everything you see in there, get rid of it. Your children don't want it. Your grandchildren don't want it.
I'm sorry.
My— we asked my son, do you want this? Do you want that? We asked the daughter, do you want any? They don't want anything. Yeah, get rid of it. I have the most gorgeous, gorgeous set of dishes that my father said, oh, I bought this for your mom the day you were born. They're gorgeous.
Get rid of it. 100%.
And, and Listen to this man because I'm the one who suffered everything from my mother. Listen to him, he is so smart, okay?
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And good luck to you, it's not an easy process.
You're welcome.
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