About Valuation Desk

Valuation Desk exists to answer one question for the things people inherit, find and collect: what is this, and what is it worth. It does it the way a specialist at a saleroom does, by reading the marks, knowing the names and looking at what similar things have made.

Marks, dates and rules come from the assay offices, the Royal Mint, HMRC and the standard references, and the guides link to them. Where a price appears, it is a hammer price, not a catalogue value or an insurance replacement, and the example prices on the site are labelled illustrative until partner saleroom results replace them.

Independence

The Desk does not buy, sell or broker, and nothing on the site is for sale. One arrangement does exist, and it is the one to know about: an item sent through the valuation form goes to a partner auction house, whose valuers look at it and reply to you. Partners pay the Desk a flat, agreed price for each enquiry they accept, and that is what funds the guides. It does not change with what your item turns out to be worth, and it does not depend on whether you sell.

That form is the only thing on the site that passes a reader's details to anyone. The guides recommend getting two opinions before you sell, and they mean it: the partner saleroom should be one of them, not both. Read a guide, use the tools, look up a hallmark, and nothing about you leaves the site. Salerooms and dealers who want to take enquiries in a category the current partner does not cover can join the waiting list.

How the guides are written

Every guide starts from the same three questions: what is the object, what decides its price, and what should the owner do next. The answers come from the standard references for the field, from the assay office and museum records where a mark or a date is involved, and from what comparable objects have made in the saleroom.

Four rules govern what gets published.

• A figure is a hammer price or it is labelled. Hammer is the winning bid before the buyer's premium. Catalogue values, insurance replacement figures and asking prices are none of those things, and where one appears it is named as such.
• A range beats a number. Two objects with the same marks and the same weight sell for different money because of condition, form and who made them. A guide that gives one figure for "a Georgian teapot" is guessing, so the guides give the range and say what moves a piece within it.
• Where the evidence is thin, the guide says so. The hallmark tables are marked provisional until they have been checked against the assay office records. The price records are marked illustrative until the partner saleroom feeds replace them. Neither is dressed up as more settled than it is.
• Primary sources are linked. Where a claim rests on the Royal Mint, the Goldsmiths' Company, HMRC, the National Archives or a museum catalogue, the guide links to it so the reader can check rather than take it on trust.

Guides carry the date they were published and the date they were last revised. A revision that changes a fact carries a note saying what changed.

What the Desk does not do. It does not value your object. Nothing here is a written valuation for probate, insurance or tax, which is a document a qualified valuer signs after handling the piece. The guides exist so that you can tell whether you need one.

Who edits the Desk

Ben Davis, editor. Ben Davis runs Valuation Desk and edits every guide before it is published, checking each mark, date and rule against the source the guide links to. He is not a valuer: an item sent through the valuation form is looked at by a specialist at a partner auction house.

Corrections come to the editor through the contact form, and every one that changes a fact is noted on the page it corrects.

The photographs

Objects on this site are photographed by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and published under its open access policy, or come from Wikimedia Commons in the public domain. Each is credited where it appears.

Corrections

Marks, dates and registers are checked against the standard references, but the field is large and the Desk is small. If a guide is wrong, say so and it will be corrected with a note.