In 1991 the Boston-based auction house Bonhams Skinner held an Antiques Roadshow-style open appraisal event, thrown as a charity fundraiser for a local hospital. Around closing time, a couple came in with a painting tucked into a brown paper bag, recalls the auction house’s vice president and general manager, Robin Starr. In that bag was a small-scale framed oil painting, signed by the American artist Fitz Henry Lane and dated 1858. The couple agreed to consign the work to Skinner for an auction, where it made $522,500, setting a record for the artist and more than reimbursing the auction house for its time.
“Every now and then you strike gold,” Starr says. When told of the painting’s likely value, the couple “nearly fainted dead away”, she adds. “It was a good thing we were at a hospital.”
Tat and treasure
Instances of a six-figure work coming through the door are exceptionally rare, but appraisal days have become a valuable part of the trade. Usually held as fundraisers for organisations such as historic houses, hospitals, libraries or museums, they invite visitors to pay a small fee, usually between $5 and $30, for the opportunity of having a local expert from an auction house or gallery examine their objects and assess their value. Sometimes, the owners receive good news; more often, those hopes are dashed. “A lot of people are just tyre-kicking, bringing things that have no particular value,” says Marty Haber, the owner of Lost Art Collectibles, a gallery in Gainesville, Florida, who served as an expert for an appraisal day there last year. “Still, I did get to meet a lot of interesting people, and maybe one of those meetings will result in someone bringing me something very rare and very valuable.”
For Gerald A. Petro, the owner of Iroquois Auctions in Brewerton, New York, there was a more immediate pay-off, when a pair of photographs by Edward S. Curtis were brought to an appraisal day held last year at the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York. “The owners had shown them to someone who told them they were fakes, so they didn’t do anything with them,” he says. Although the 19th-century prints were a bit faded, Petro recognised them as genuine, eventually selling them for $7,000 and $30,000 apiece. These events tend to be a win-win for those involved: members of the local community get an expert to offer an opinion about a work’s condition and value. And the dealers and auctioneers get to meet potential consignors and even future bidders.
Bonhams Skinner takes part in more than a dozen appraisal day events per year, while the Dallas-headquartered Heritage Auctions sponsors around 20 such events, both at nonprofits near its principal locations (Dallas, Chicago, New York, Palm Beach and Beverly Hills) and at its selling offices. “Some people are intimidated by auction houses,” Starr says. “They believe the rumour that if you scratch your nose at the wrong time, the auctioneer will take that as a bid on something you can’t afford.” Appraisal days can also bring people into a museum who might not come otherwise, and some of those people may become regular visitors or even members and donors of cash or objects. Also, the auctioneer or dealer may donate to the museum or host organisation a percentage of the commission on a sale.
A good lead-in
These events are “regularly profitable” to Heritage Auctions, says its vice-president of business development, Roberta Kramer. Sometimes this is because of the objects brought on the day, but it is more often through meeting people “who find our experts to be competent, friendly, honest, and they want to set up appointments for someone from the auction house to come to their house”. These events “are a good lead-in to other things”, she says.
While some visitors bringing items for an appraisal day event may have visions of big paydays, “most people are more interested in learning about the history of the object or work of art”, says Allison Shilling, the deputy director of the Concord Museum in Massachusetts, which has brought in Bonhams Skinner staff for these occasions. “Many of the items that are brought in have been passed down from generation to generation, and the person coming in knows that the item is important to their family, and they usually have a story associated with how it came to their family,” she says.
Ethical and legal risks
Museum curators and other staffers are regularly asked by people to look at what they own and offer an estimate of its worth. However, the code of ethics for curators from the American Alliance of Museums states that “curators who become involved in establishing the monetary value of objects or authenticating objects expose themselves and their institution to conflicts of interest and legal risks. Therefore, curators must not prepare appraisals for any reason.” The recommended practice is for curators to refer object owners to professional appraisers or societies of appraisers.
If museum curators are barred from offering valuations, dealers and auctioneers are not, and they usually are happy for the opportunity. Starr notes that formal appraisals, which would be done for estate or tax purposes, are not free and need to be negotiated with the auction house. However, what she calls “auction appraisals”—an estimate of what an object is likely to fetch in a public sale—are free. At times, someone from the auction house will visit someone’s home, again for free, “but we need a fairly good sense of what they have”.
