Information On Antique Price Guides
So, you've cleaned out your attic or closet and found an old and curious item, maybe an antique cupboard or an antique bookcase. Or perhaps you've inherited an interesting looking item that is no doubt antique and may even be worth a nice sum of money. I mean, it certainly looks very old - but how do you know if it's actually worth anything? For many people, the answer to this question is looking in antique price guides, in order to get a rough idea of how much you might be able to sell your new (old) item for. However, not each antique price guide is created equal and so you want to find a reliable guide and fully understand how to use it.
One way to determine the quality of an antique price guide, is to see if it mentions how the prices are determined. If it doesn't mention how the prices are determined, then stay away as some methods are not very reliable! For example, some antiques price guides will solely use results of similar auctions to determine an average cost. This can be an okay method, so long as many such auctions are taken in to account. If only a small sample of similar auctions are used, unusually high or low bids can seriously skew the accuracy of the antique price guides numbers. In my opinion, it's best to use a guide that uses a combination of methods to determine prices, as those to tend to be the most reliable.
