The three routes, and what each is for
Selling antiques in Britain means choosing between three buyers: a dealer who buys outright, a saleroom that sells on your behalf, and the public, through a listing you write yourself. A dealer pays a wholesale figure the same day. Go to a saleroom and the deduction is 10 to 20 percent of the hammer price, plus VAT and fixed charges, paid four to six weeks after a sale that still stands months ahead. Write the listing yourself and the retail margin is yours, at the cost of a week of evenings for every twenty objects.
The object picks the route, and the question that settles it is whether there is a collector for the thing or only a use for it. A Victorian mahogany chest of drawers has a use, and it sells steadily through a dealer or a general sale. A Nathaniel Mills card case has a collector, and the price records hold one that made £640 at hammer against an estimate of £400 to £600, illustrative rather than a particular sale. That belongs in a specialist auction, where the bidding runs between people who can name it.
Identify it before you price it
The route cannot be decided until the object has been read. A valuer asks four questions before quoting a figure, and what is this worth sets them out in order. Marks come first, because a mark answers three of the four at once. For silver, start at the hallmarks index and put the row into the identifier, which reads British silver standards and holds no gold marks.
The answer also decides which market the object goes to. Silver carries a metal floor that nothing sells below, so a plain piece has a guaranteed buyer and a named one has a ceiling. Coins and medals are graded and named, and the name on a medal rim is researched before the medal is offered. Books turn on the printing, stamps on the plate and the perforation. A whole house rather than one object is a different exercise, described in estate auctions and the probate guides.
What a £500 object returns on each route
Take an object a saleroom would estimate at £400 to £600, and put it through the three routes at the charge rates in the auctions guide.
| Dealer | Saleroom | Listed yourself | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross figure | £300 offered | £500 at hammer | £500 to the buyer |
| Deductions | None | £112 in commission, VAT, lotting, photography and insurance | £60 in platform fees, postage and packing |
| In your hand | £300 | £388 | £440, less your own time |
| Paid | Same day | 4 to 6 weeks after the sale, and the sale is weeks or months off | As it sells |
| Risk you carry | None | The lot is bought in and returns with a fee | Damage in transit, or a refund demand |
The dealer column assumes 60 percent of the expected hammer, which is an assumption rather than a published rate: ask two dealers and two numbers come back. The other columns assume the sale happens at the figure shown, and the saleroom deduction follows the rates British provincial rooms quote.
When a dealer’s offer beats the hammer
Four situations reverse that arithmetic. Bulky furniture of modest value is the clearest: a pine wardrobe heading for a hammer price under £100 costs more to get to a saleroom than it makes there. Specialism decides the next, because a dealer in militaria with a customer waiting pays more than a general sale in which the same object goes to the trade for resale.
Then there is time, since probate deadlines and a house completing do not wait for a specialist sale that runs twice a year, and estate auctions sets out how long a whole-house entry takes.
Last is certainty. A dealer’s offer can be turned down in the morning and accepted in the afternoon; a saleroom’s estimate is a forecast, and the reserve is the only part the seller sets.
Ivory, and the rule that catches ordinary Victorian objects
Offering an item made of or containing ivory from a listed species for sale in the UK without an exemption is an offence under the Ivory Act 2018, which came into force on 6 June 2022. Since 28 January 2025 the listed species are the elephant, hippopotamus, killer whale, narwhal and sperm whale. DEFRA’s guidance on dealing in items containing ivory counts advertising it, inviting an offer, keeping it for sale and helping somebody else to sell it as dealing, so a saleroom cannot enter an unregistered piece and a private seller cannot list one. The maximum penalty is a £250,000 fine or five years in prison.
This reaches further into an ordinary house than sellers expect: a tea caddy with an ivory escutcheon, a teapot with ivory insulators in the handle, a set of silver cutlery with ivory handles, a piano with ivory keys.
| Exemption | What the item has to be | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-1947, under 10 percent ivory | Made before 3 March 1947, under 10 percent ivory by volume, all of it integral to the object | £20 registration |
| Musical instrument | Made before 1975, under 20 percent ivory by volume | £20 registration |
| Portrait miniature | Made before 1918, surface area no more than 320 square centimetres | £20 registration |
| Outstandingly high artistic, cultural or historic value | Made before 1918, and a rare and important example of its type | £250, assessed in about 3 months |
A set made at one time to be kept and used together registers as a single item for £20, so a canteen of ivory-handled cutlery is one registration rather than twelve. Between 3 and 20 items that are not a set, going to the same buyer under the same exemption, register as a group for £50.
A registration is spent once the item is sold, and the next owner registers again. An exemption certificate stays with the object. Keeping the piece, giving it away, lending it or leaving it in a will needs no registration at all.
Capital gains tax starts at £6,000, and clocks sit outside it
Antiques are named in HMRC’s guidance on capital gains tax on personal possessions. The gain is measured against what was paid for the object, or, where it was inherited and the inheritance tax value is not known, against market value. That gives the figure entered on IHT407 a second life as the seller’s base cost, and the IHT407 guide sets out what open market value at the date of death means to HMRC.
Anything with a lifespan of under 50 years is outside the tax. HMRC’s wording covers all machinery and names antique clocks and watches, so a longcase clock carries no capital gains tax whatever it makes, while a bureau sold above its probate value does.
Between £6,000 and £15,000 the gain is capped. Subtract £6,000 from the sale figure, multiply by 1.667, and compare the result with the actual gain: the lower of the two is the chargeable gain. A picture inherited at £1,000 and sold at £7,000 has an actual gain of £6,000 and a capped figure of £1,667, and £1,667 is the chargeable gain. Whether any tax follows from it depends on the annual exempt amount and the rest of that year’s gains.
Valuation and advertising fees come off the gain; repairs do not. Where the object is jointly owned, the first £6,000 of each share is exempt. HMRC applies the £6,000 to a whole set sold to the same person, however many invoices it is split across, and matching vases are named there as a set. Parts sold to different people each get their own £6,000.
What to do to it before it goes, and what not to
Leave the surface alone. Original finish on furniture, original patina on bronze and the untouched inside of a clock case are what the trade pays for, and a weekend with wire wool removes the evidence that the piece is what you say it is. A refinished Georgian chest sells as a Georgian chest that has been refinished.
Keep every piece of paper that came with it. A dated bill, an old insurance schedule, a photograph of it in the room it stood in: each is provenance, which adds money without touching the object.
Photograph it where it stands, before it is moved, cleaned or taken apart: the marks, the underside, the joints and the damage. Those photographs are what a valuer works from, and the only record of the object as you found it if a courier damages it later. The valuation form puts them in front of a partner saleroom’s valuer for an opinion on one item.
