The four questions, in order
A valuer handed an unfamiliar object asks four things before putting a figure on it: what it is made of, whose name is on it, when it was made, and what has happened to it since. Comparable sales come fifth and mean nothing without the first four.
Most objects stop at question one. A white metal tray with no marks on it is electroplate in the ordinary case, electroplate has no metal value at all, and the answer is a few pounds whatever the pattern is advertised at elsewhere. Unmarked does not settle it though, and the six tests for silver or plate separate electroplate from Old Sheffield plate and continental silver at the kitchen table.
One thing comes before all four: which figure is being asked for. An insurance valuation is what replacing the object would cost, a probate valuation is what it would fetch on the open market, and a dealer’s offer is what somebody hands over today. They run in that order, highest to lowest, and the probate valuation guide sets them side by side. This page answers the middle one.
Where the mark is, and what it settles
The answer is on the part of the object nobody looks at.
| What you have | Where to look | What it settles | Start here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silver | The underside, the base rim, or the back of a spoon handle | Metal, assay office, year, maker | Reading British silver hallmarks |
| Books | The title page, and the copyright page behind it | Edition, printing, publisher | First edition or first printing |
| Stamps | The perforations, the watermark in the paper, and the gum on the back | Which catalogue number it is, and the condition | Valuing a stamp collection |
| Coins | The date, and the reverse design | Year, reign, whether it holds silver or gold | What actually sells from the tin |
| Medals | The rim, read edge-on under a lamp | The man, his number, his regiment | Researching a medal from the rim |
Silver marks answer three questions at once, and the hallmark identifier reads them in sequence: standard mark, town mark, date letter, maker’s initials. Its date-letter tables hold London from 1876, Birmingham from 1875, Sheffield from 1918 to 1967, and the national cycles every open office shared from 1975. Chester and Glasgow are absent and it says so. Edinburgh and Dublin have nothing before 1975, so a Georgian Edinburgh piece has to be dated from the date letters guide and the printed reference it names.
The identifier reads marks. It puts no price on anything.
What has already been done to it
Condition is the fourth question, and the damage that matters was done by somebody trying to help.
A monogram buffed out of a piece of silver leaves a dished patch, and the piece falls to its metal value. Cleaning costs a coin between a third and three quarters of its price and is recorded in every catalogue it appears in afterwards, which is why the grading guide opens on never doing it. One edge cut into the design takes a Penny Black to a fraction of what the same stamp makes with four clear margins. Worst of the four is the discarded dust jacket: a first printing of The Great Gatsby makes a few hundred thousand pounds in one against a few thousand bare.
None of it is reversible, so stop at the polishing cloth.
The floor, for anything with metal in it
Silver and gold carry a value that owes nothing to the object, which is the weight of the metal in it. Nobody pays the whole of it: a refiner takes a margin and a high street buyer takes more. Treat the melt figure as a ceiling, and as the level a piece with no maker, age or form sells near.
The scrap calculator works the silver figure against the London benchmark: weight, times fineness, times the price per gram. It handles silver only. Gold works the same way, and the selling sovereigns guide runs it through on a coin.
Comparables are what sold, not what is being asked
An asking price is somebody’s hope. A hammer price is a completed transaction with two bidders behind it, and a listing is no guide to either.
The price records hold hammer prices by category beside the estimate the saleroom gave beforehand. They are illustrative ranges for the launch build rather than particular sales, so read them as the shape of a category rather than the value of your piece.
When it is a house rather than an object
An executor facing a whole house works the other way round: value first, sell second, clear last, with the figure going on the inheritance tax schedule at gross hammer. The probate section covers what HMRC expects, and estate auctions covers what a saleroom does with the contents once they leave.
Once the object has a name, a date and a condition, the route to a buyer follows from it, and how to sell antiques sets out what a dealer, a saleroom and a listing of your own each return on the same piece.
For an object none of the five rows fits, photograph it square on, then the underside, then any mark filling the frame. The valuation form sends those to a specialist valuer for a free opinion on one item, which is the cheapest way to find out whether question five is worth asking.
