Pottery Valuation & Appraisal

I'm afraid we are no longer offering a valuation and appraisal service and can no longer respond to email requests for valuations or appraisals of items.

Advice on Identifying Your Items

If you would like help with identifying your item, take a look at our pottery mark identification database and our past stock database. Both of these may enable you to identify backstamps and designs similar to yours, thus helping you appraise and value your item. Remember, however, that small differences in design and condition can have a significant effect on price.

These books are also highly recommended for help in identifying pottery marks:


Advice on Valuing & Selling Your Items

If you are interested in valuing and/or selling your items, then we would suggest that you create an account on eBay and use it to do a completed items search for an item like yours. The number of items sold on eBay is vast and you have a reasonably good chance of finding something the same as yours and seeing what price it sold for.

As a private seller, eBay sale prices are a fairly realistic expectation of those that you can expect to achieve. Antique shops and online retailers such as ourselves naturally have slightly higher prices as we offer additional guarantees of quality and authenticity and are, of course, operating a business. Think of the difference between private sale prices for used cars and dealer prices for the same cars!

For good quality items, you may achieve a higher price by selling through a conventional auction house than by selling on eBay. However, bear in mind that the sellers' fees charged by most auction houses are greater than those charged by eBay - 15%-20% is fairly standard, compared to about 10% on eBay. Most auction houses are happy to provide pre-sale estimates of value without committing you to sell your items - contact auction houses near to you for further details (try the Yellow Pages).

To learn more about how auctions work, click here for our auction guide.

Another way to sell your items is to visit antique fairs and find dealers selling items similar to that which you wish to sell. Many dealers will purchase items for cash in these situations - we certainly used to when we stood at fairs.