New to sites and world of antiques

Greetings from the Pacific Northwest!

I recently inherited a lot of antique furniture and don't really know what I have. Some we are keeping in the family and a lot of it we would like to sell. I have an antique dealer and a few people interested in buying some pieces but don't want to get ripped off! Can anyone offer some guidance on how to sell pieces? I have no idea what style they are, from what era and what price they would go for. Appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks!

 

If it was me I would get a good auction house in and set reserves on everything so they don't go for less than you want, A good auction house should guide you on valuations.

 

Greetings from another PNW dweller!

I see you've loaded several pictures to the Gallery, Amanda. You should start a thread about your pieces in the Furniture Forum and attach the pics with any information you may have - particularly dimensions. The furniture gurus may want some additional pictures or info, so don't be surprised.

 

welcome

 

I tried to create a thread but when I tried to load the photos it kept saying Error, The uploaded file is too large. So I couldn't upload any of the photos. When I tried to load the same pictures onto the gallery for some reason it was fine. Am confused on what the problem is.
~Amanda

 

What does "set reserves" mean?

 

It means that you set a certain price with the auction house that you don't want to go below, That means if the bidding doesn't go high enough your item won't go for a lower price.

 

Sorry to hear about your picture issues, Amanda. The limit for posting a picture to a thread (as opposed to the Gallery) is 1MB. 640 px by 480 px (what some photo editing programs call "Large Web" size) works for me, but is often much smaller than the size created by phone cameras.

PoisonIvy is talking "auction lingo" when mentioning "set reserves. In some auctions, the item owner tells the auctioneer the absolute minimum price acceptable - called the reserve - and if bidding does not reach that amount the item is not sold.

 

Picture files larger than a megabyte will not load. You need to resize them to smaller filesizes. Any photoediting program will do this but in my opinion the site should auto resize mega pixel pictures, there is no hope at all of educating the entire population one by one.

Shrug and shrink is the way to go.

 

Ah, thanks for explaining.

 

I will have to try to get my boyfriend to help me resize the photos, I bet he knows how. My problems with setting "set reserves" is that I have no idea how much this furniture is worth. And if things don't sell I don't have a place to put them.

 

I haven't put anything into auction myself but as I mentioned before I would think a good auction house would advise on what items are worth, Bear in mind they will take commission from the hammer price too.

 

What Ivy meant in her first post was that you *could* get a reasonably-local auctioneer to come see the furniture in person - someone who knows your local market well - to help you understand what your pieces are likely to sell for - and in conjunction with them, you decide what you are willing to take to part with the furniture. Since you can't store them, you may very well have to take what you can get.

Hopefully you will get the picture re-sizing resolved so you can post them here and get information about A) what you have, and B) what the market for such things may be like in various locations.

 

Okay thanks. I sent an email with pictures to my local auction house on Wednesday and have had no response. I'm wondering if they are just not interested. I'm going to go take more pictures and get the dimensions and stop by in person.

 

I'm sure it all seems very daunting, Try more than one auction house if there's more in your area.

Also once you get your photos on here there are some very knowledgeable people here who might be able to help.

 

Alright, I will look into that. Thanks for all your help, I am quite overwhelmed.

 

You're welcome.

 

Welcome!

 

Hi and WELCOME Amanda!! Hang in there and I'm sure more help will show up here!!!! Definitely have the BF help shrink the pics to fit here as they will want to see them!! And Good Luck with the selling!!!!

 

Welcome!
I'm a Pacific Northwest-dweller also.