Help with pricing

Hi all
I have bought a job lot of old china/ porcelain pieces
My antique knowledge is very limited. How can I get items valued and aged ?
I live in the England any advise would be greatly appreciated cheers Neil

 

Hi Neil, I'm sure if you post pictures on the porcelain forum, someone will help you with style, age, manufacturer. Many post links to similar items for sale or sold.

 

or troddle them into a local antique store...

 

I like to look at the sold prices on ebay. Every dealer I know does that,it gives you a good idea on what people are paying. For example,I bought a piece of Wold pottery from your neck of the woods for $1,looked on ebay sold page,and realized they werent going for much more than I paid.I would like to say be careful if your starting out buying to sell. Unless you get stuff super cheap,it very quickly ends up costing you. If china is your thing,learn as much as you can before you buy.Ive been at this for decades,and I still dont know 1/10th of what I should.

 

Antique stores don't usually don't give too many free appraisals - however they may offer to buy the lot for $20 if they see a $300 piece in there. Maybe England is better than the U.S. in this regard, though. Not sure.

Searching under Ebay "sold" --as a first step, is how I do it. (If nothing under "sold" you could try here under the porcelain forum as suggested.)

Old china overall is a hard sell these days. There are exceptions of course.

 

Googling for info is priceless but you can easily be swamped with irrelevant information after performing a search.

If you want more accurate results for a given phrase when searching on google then put your phrase in speech marks i.e "Royal Dux Cockatoo". Plus if you want to exclude eBay listings (for example) from the Google search results then just type a minus sign and the word ebay (-ebay) after your search phrase.

Or you can combine the two above like this ->

"Royal Dux Cockatoo" -ebay

 

Nope... England is no better. I agree with above, click on advanced (alongside the search button at the top of the eBay page) and tick the sold box before performing your search again. This will give you results of prices actually recently paid instead of a full list that might include wishful thinkers.

Have a look at the prices that have been paid for a similar item to the one you have and then consider the condition of your item in comparison. Price accordingly.

I am not greedy and so usually will take an average from across the spectrum of prices. This ensures everyone gets a fair deal. Generally I will ignore auction prices as sometimes buyers have struck lucky and picked up a Rembrandt for 99p auction price but it doesn't mean that I will sell mine for that. Researching, cleaning, listing and shipping all takes time so make sure you factor that in to your price as well as all the fees you will have to pay to eBay and Paypal if you choose to sell that way.

I have seen items in the UK sell on eBay for 99p with free shipping. That is quite astonishing when one considers that the cheapest small parcel delivery (which would be needed if something is packaged properly) in the UK costs £2.82.

In short be realistic with your pricing, customers do not want their Royal Doulton figurine delivered in a cereal box stuffed with screwed up newspaper and if you were to send items out that way then be prepared to pay out a fortune in return parcel costs and refunds.