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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;J Dagger, post: 9825612, member: 10944&quot;]My Chinese ex gf’s family has a bronze censer passed down through the family. It’s one of the only things they fled China with. I had it authenticated and appraised by a highly regarded expert in the field. It was 18th century, a good example, in good condition, but only appraised at around $500-$700 or so if I recall. Nice example but nothing spectacular. I submitted it to Sothebys just to get a second opinion but more to just to be able to present more evidence to her very curious mother. They responded that they weren’t interested. I’ve asked them about one or two other pieces that were nice but not spectacular and fell in a similar value range. They declined interest in those cases as well. They do offer items in those price ranges in their auctions but I think they probably only take that stuff when they have to in order to get better stuff from the same consignor. They really cater to the top of the market and they spend a huge amount promoting their sales. I’m sure they’ve got it figured out that each item they enter into an auction costs them X amount in overhead and time and that when considering single items they need to reach X estimate to make all the costs and paperwork, communication, shipping, and everything worth it. I guarantee if you had 30 items worth 10k each and 5 items only worth $500-$1000 each that they’d take the 5 lesser priced items in order to get the 30 others. It’s worth asking mid tier or lower high tier auction houses about them but the problem is that most of those auction houses don’t have dedicated experts in all fields, if in any field. Museums might be the way to go or finding European based auction houses that may seem to gravitate towards items of this era.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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