The No-Nonsense Guide to Art Appraisal

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They are not real appraisers, they are just pretenders.

The real appraisers have successfully passed a difficult test called the ASA (Art Sales Agent) exam.

The No-Nonsense Guide to Art Appraisal: A blog about what art appraisers do and how to find one.

The No-Nonsense Guide to Art Appraisal is a blog about what art appraisers do and how to find one. The Guide has been in existence since 2005, first on the site of the National Association of Appraisers (NAA) and now here at Art Business News. It was founded by Maxime Dacosta, an art dealer who had spent the previous decade as an art auctioneer and appraiser, and has since been written by a variety of contributors.

Art appraisal is not an exact science, so there are many different approaches to doing an appraisal, depending on the purpose for which the appraisal will be used. Assessing the monetary value of a work of art can be done for several purposes: for insurance purposes; for marital settlement in divorce cases; as fair market value for estate tax planning; or simply because a family member wants to know what something is worth.

The guide is intended for lay readers with little or no knowledge about art appraisal and is therefore written in plain language that avoids jargon as much as possible. It attempts to give readers a good understanding of what appraisers do when they look at works of art, how they go about doing it, and how they arrive at their conclusions. It also provides suggestions on where readers can

This is a very good guide to starting your own appraisal business. I agree with her almost entirely, but there are two things she didn’t cover well enough. The first is the most important: don’t start your own appraisal business until you’ve talked to several appraisers and know what they do, how much they charge, and how well they do it. The second is that even if you do know what the job is like, it’s a bad idea to go into the art appraisal business for the wrong reasons–i.e., because you hate working for someone else or are trying to get rich quick. If you hate working for someone else, I recommend starting a blog about how to start an art appraisal business instead of actually starting one.

I have some experience in this area as an art appraiser myself, and I can tell you that whatever its drawbacks (and they are many) being your own boss comes with huge advantages.

Art Appraisal is an interesting and complex topic. So if you want to learn about it, there are some good places to start.

Appraisers are in the business of valuing art objects. These objects vary from paintings of dogs on fire eating people and other paintings of people on fire eating dogs, to the famous Great Wall of China. But they all have one thing in common: they are valuable.

Each piece of art has a story behind it, be it a story about how the artist created it, or a story about how it has changed hands over time, or a story about how appraisers value it today. Art appraisal is not just one kind of job; there are several different kinds and each tells a different story.**

**http://www.artappraiserblog.com/ **

The first step in appraising art is to form an opinion about the artist’s ability. Because your opinion is going to be based on what you see, you should be prepared to see something that might contradict your preconceived notions.

The easiest way to do this is to go look at the artist’s website. In most cases, a website will give you a great idea of the quality of work you can expect. If there is no website, or if you don’t like what you see there, there are several websites devoted to tracking down artists’ email addresses and inviting them to submit images of their work—sometimes for free and sometimes for a fee. The fee-based services typically offer more information about the artist when you purchase their services.

A good art appraiser will want to know everything about your painting: its history, who owned it, and how it got into your hands. For this reason alone it is always better to use someone who lives nearby than someone who lives across the country or on another continent. The time difference alone makes it difficult or impossible to have a meaningful conversation on the phone.

The purpose of this article is to select an art appraiser that you can trust and feel comfortable with, and to describe the process of how the appraisal is done.

What is an art appraisal? An art appraisal is a professional opinion of value, usually expressed as a dollar figure. The value may be based on what the owner paid for it, or on what it might bring at auction. The appraiser determines the value of artwork based on its condition, subject matter, rarity, age, artist’s reputation and popularity, color scheme, design elements, size, and subject matter.

Tone:matter-of-fact

If you are inheriting a large amount of art or other valuable items from a family member, you may be concerned about how much the items are worth and what you should do with them.

Appraisers look at three values for an item: fair market value, replacement value, and insurance value.

Fair market value is usually considered the highest price a buyer would pay for an item in an open market when neither the buyer nor seller is under undue pressure to complete a sale. It is generally based on comparable sales of similar items.

To find out the fair market value of your item, start by researching similar items sold in recent auctions and estate sales. Then consider adding 10-20 percent to that price to account for uniqueness or special conditions that may have influenced the sale. For example, if you have one of five known copies of a first edition signed by the author, you would likely add more than 20 percent because it is extremely rare.

Armed with this information, consider contacting auction houses (like Sotheby’s and Christie’s) and dealers (like Robert Edward Auctions) to get their opinion. Keep in mind that most appraisers work on commission so they will likely give higher estimates than appraisal services that do not offer professional valuations.

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