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Do you know the difference between a purchase offer, an asking price and an appraised value? If you are buying or selling antiques, you need to know how to tell the differences between these values. If you don’t, you can lose a lot of money.

Here are three simple definitions you need to know when buying or selling antiques.

1. Appraisal value

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Just like a real estate appraisal, appraised values for antiques like the appraisals I provide are opinions of value from an unbiased, educated, experienced, and ethical expert. Resellers may quote you a purchase offer for your antique (see number 3 below) if they want to buy your antique. This is not an appraisal. Read how price guides are not appraisals either.

Appraisal opinions are based on a recent sales record where an object like yours has actually sold. Sold means someone has paid cash, swiped a credit card or written a check in order to pay for that object. For a higher sale price, your antique must score well with these five antiques value indicators.

If the banks require an unbiased real estate appraiser to appraise a house to obtain a mortgage, then getting an unbiased appraiser to appraise your antiques is also wise. Read my blog post outlining the three types of appraisal values: Auction, Insurance, and Retail so you know what type of appraisal value you really need.

2. Asking price

If you have been to my events or watched my videos, you heard me say, “An asking price is a hope, a wish, a dream … and not an appraisal”. The asking price is what a reseller comes up with in trying to gauge the market to sell an object or to try to create unrealistic markets like a recent story about 90,000 dollar beanie babies. Read how this is an asking price and not an appraised value. Just because they are asking these prices, doesn’t mean they will get these prices. Remember they are just asking for this price, nobody has paid it yet. In number 1 above, an appraised value is what somebody actually got.

3. Purchase offer

A purchase offer is the amount of money that a reseller is willing to pay for an object based on his knowledge of the market … and not an appraisal of what people really paid. Purchase offers are usually very low offers where a reseller can turn a very high profit based on the seller not really knowing what their antiques are worth. Of course, I understand that a reseller has to make a profit, so their purchase offer will most likely be less than the appraised value which is the value they plan to sell, but be careful. The offer should not be that much less than the appraised value. Read a true story of how low purchase offers can be when compared to actual sales values.

If you need an unbiased appraisal for one or many items, I can help. Don’t forget to share this article with your friends and family who might be downsizing grandma’s home. Do you have a how do I know the value question?