Antiques & Furniture Appraisals
Period furniture, decorative arts, and full household antique inventories.
Personal property valuation is not a state-licensed activity. These assignments are performed as desk appraisals from photographs and documentation, which means NextPhase accepts them anywhere in the United States and internationally.
What drives the number
The antiques market has softened considerably in recent decades, and heirs are frequently working from a value expectation set thirty years ago. An honest, documented conclusion serves an estate far better than an inflated one that collapses under review.
Commonly appraised
- Period and reproduction furniture
- Decorative arts and porcelain
- Silver and flatware services
- Clocks and timepieces
- Rugs and textiles
- Full household inventories
What we'll need from you
- Photographs including maker's marks, labels, and construction details
- Approximate age and origin if known
- Dimensions for larger pieces
- Provenance, receipts, or prior appraisals
- Condition notes including repairs and refinishing
Full household contents are typically valued on a lotted basis with representative detail, which keeps the fee proportionate to the assignment.
What actually moves the number
Every asset class has its own small number of factors that do most of the work. For antiques & furniture they are these, and they are the reason a general-purpose valuation and a considered one can be so far apart.
Period, revival, or reproduction
A period piece, a nineteenth-century revival of that period, and a twentieth-century reproduction can look nearly identical in a photograph and occupy three entirely different markets. Construction tells the story — dovetails, saw marks, secondary woods, shrinkage, hardware, the underside and the back. Those are the photographs that matter, not the front.
Original surface is usually the most valuable thing about it
Refinishing is the most common and most costly thing done to American furniture. An original surface, however tired, is generally preferred to a fresh one, and stripping is irreversible. If a piece has been refinished, that is reported; it is very often the reason a valuation disappoints.
Restoration versus replacement
Replaced feet, a replaced top, re-cut veneer, marriages of two pieces into one. These are examined explicitly because they are common, deliberate, and frequently well executed enough to pass an owner's inspection for decades.
The brown furniture problem, stated plainly
The market for conventional dark antique furniture has been weak for years while mid-century and studio work has been strong. Owners often carry a value in their head from when the piece was bought or last insured. An honest appraisal reports the market as it is on the effective date, and that conversation is better had early.
Who reads the finished report
Estates are the most common purpose, and the executor needs figures that will not be challenged by a beneficiary who has looked at retail asking prices online. Donations go to the IRS with a specific description. Insurers want replacement cost. In a division, furniture is frequently the category where the two sides' expectations are furthest apart, and a defensible report earns its fee by closing that gap.
How the fee gets set
Furniture prices by lot count and by how much identification each lot needs. A whole-house contents appraisal is a different animal from four significant pieces, and both are quoted flat. If you are not sure which you have, send photographs of the rooms and you will be told.
What arrived
A photograph of the front, and a family attribution of "eighteenth century, came over with the family."
What was asked for next
The back, the underside, a drawer removed with the side visible, and a close view of the hardware and its mounting holes. That is where furniture is actually identified.
What those showed
Machine-cut dovetails and circular saw marks on the secondary wood — both of which place manufacture well after the attributed period.
How it was reported
Valued as a later piece in the earlier style, with the construction evidence photographed and described so the family could see the reasoning rather than be asked to accept a conclusion. The family history was recorded as reported.
Three things that cost people money
All three are done with good intentions, usually by someone trying to help. They are worth knowing whoever you end up hiring.
- Refinishing before selling or valuing
It feels like improvement and it is usually destruction of value. If the piece might matter, do nothing to it until somebody has looked.
- Photographing only the fronts
The front is the least informative view of a piece of furniture. Backs, undersides, drawer interiors and hardware are where age is established.
- Pricing from retail listings
A dealer's asking price includes their restoration, their overhead and their time, and it is not evidence of what the piece would fetch from the owner's position. Fair market value and shop retail are different numbers for the same object.
Machinery & Equipment
A tractor, a CNC cell, an imaging suite or a whole facility inventory is personal property too, and it is usually worth more than everything else in the estate combined. Same appraiser, same standard, its own schedule of comparables.
| Scope | Typical fee |
|---|---|
| 1 item or lot | $75 – $150 |
| 2–10 items | $125 – $250 |
| 11–50 items | $200 – $400 |
| 50+ items / full contents | quoted per engagement |
Related personal property assets
Questions about antiques & furniture
Can you appraise a whole house of contents?
Yes, and it is a common assignment for estates. It is scoped by lots rather than by object, with significant pieces itemized and the remainder grouped — and the report says exactly which is which.
Does it matter that the piece has woodworm?
Yes, and whether it is active matters more than whether it is present. Old, treated damage is a condition note; active infestation is a materially different situation and is reported as such.
What if some pieces are worth very little?
You will be told. Most household contents appraisals contain pieces that are not individually worth the cost of appraising, and grouping them is the correct treatment rather than a shortcut.
Do you buy anything you appraise?
No, ever. NextPhase does not buy, sell or broker anything it appraises. An appraiser who might become the buyer has an interest in the number, which is precisely what the certification in the report disclaims.
Ready for a number you can defend?
Tell us what you have and what it's for. You get a fixed written quote — never an hourly meter, never a sales call.
What the work actually looks like
Real assignments, client details removed — what each engagement actually turned on, rather than how it felt.
A house, a workshop of machine tools, a forty-year firearms collection and a stake in the family company — four disciplines that three appraisers had only partly covered. One engagement, one effective date, one set of assumptions.
A donation the regulations would have aggregated past the appraisal threshold, which the donor had assessed item by item. One qualified appraisal covering the group, itemized, signed inside the window the regulations allow.
An opposing report whose number was not obviously wrong — which is what made it dangerous. It failed on its own certification, and was answered section by section with an independent valuation to the correct definition of value.