Have you ever had part of your collection appraised?
 

I had my vintage Greenberg collection appraised for free yesterday by the good people at Just Collect in Somerset, NJ. I had never had my collection appraised before, so I was a bit anxious to hear what they had to say in terms of what value they deem my collection.

I'm not going to give out exact #s, but all in all they valued my collection about $600 more than what I paid for everything, which was pretty great to hear.

Have any of you had appraisal experiences? Have the appraisals been high or low?

Looking forward to hearing what you guys have to say.

Thanks,

Brian

How did it work?

Not really but Sean Bassik is available for $250 per hour according to his website. You may want to jump all over that deal. On a serious note, curiously did you have this done for insurance purposes?


Jason

Some collections have cards where there is no way to know a value unless they go to auction.

http://luckeycards.com/pt214jennings2a.jpg
http://luckeycards.com/pt214.jpg

Two of their associates took down my graded and ungraded cards (and condition). Assuming they took this back and cross-referenced recent sales and VCP, then gave a high and low sale for each card. They then totaled it up and gave me a low and a high value for everything.

I told them that I wasn't interested in selling so no offer was made, but I'm going to guess that they would have made an offer for 50% of their higher value

This. I was really just curious about what it was valued at.

Totally understand. When I try to value mine I get a very, very wide spread. My wife asks about it every now and then and I sort of scratch my head. I really don't know the value but it's more than it should be relative to other resources :confused:. (and she is cool with it).

I just tell her that if we have a financial issue I will sell a few cards and that usually quells the worries.

About 25 years ago I was purchasing my first home. Had the down payment and enough income but my net worth was low (note to those under 40, things were different back then). So I mentioned I had some cards. Offhand I recall the best were a 1933 Goudey Ruth, Old Judge Monty Ward, and a few N28 commons.

They suggested an appraisal might work so I went to AJs Sport Shop in Vienna Va and they gave a value around $3K, typed up the appraisal on their letterhead, and I gave it to the loan company. It worked. In hindsight it shouldn't have worked since anyone could have given a bogus appraisal.

Thanks for sharing.

So, in other words, unless you need a third party for insurance purposes, with the internet you can appraise your own collection and get the same results.

Each collector should be able to give a fairly good estimate of their own collections values. As far as t206 errors go I would only trust 1 or 2 others regarding value.

Yeah, but don't most of us overvalue the cards that we own? Besides, it's nice to hear that we have some valuable items from a knowledgeable third party.

Leon, I can definitely identify with this. :D

i think many of us on this board are more than capable of appraising our own collections...atleast I know I can.

when I have appraised my collection...which was a few yrs ago I tended to err on the conservative side.

I agree that each of us should be able to come up with a reasonable estimate for most of our cards. My question is whether self-evaluation is sufficient for an insurance company? It seems that they would want/need a third party to protect against fraud.

AppraisLs
 

I would not care what someone else thought my collection was worth except for insurance purposes if alive and for estate purposes if dead ( and will specifies distribution to heirs versus sale by executor). Your executor should know how to either sell it or get it valued.

I've been using that for a few years, but I fear that's run its course. The wife is starting to go on offense. "You know if you sold a few cards like you are always telling me you can, then we could.............":eek:

Theoretically you could have your collection appraised...then have to sell the collection to pay for the appraisal:eek:

Would any insurer rely on a self-appraisal?

I have no idea...but if they'd trust an appraisal from a dealer whose been dealing vintage for less yrs than my youngest underwear...why not?

Yup, someone would have to execute me to try and take my collection of cardboard....

I'm going to have to guess that there's probably a lot of people that read this board that can do a better job of appraising there own collection than having someone else do it.

I suppose that I could come up with my own appraisal if I took the time to dig through all of the boxes - kind of tricky to set a value on all of the '87 Donruss and '90 Score cards - there's some gold in there.

It seems like people would inflate the value of their collection, but your point it well taken.

I have a relatively modest collection, but collectibles insurance services (collectinsure.com) simply based my policy on the estimate I gave them. When my renewal came up, and I had sold off some cards, I adjusted it down and my premium lowered as well.

My insurance company required either purchase receipts or examples of comparable sales. Very simple process.

Has anyone ever had to file a claim? If so what's the process like? Feel free to respond via PM.

You are going to have to pay the inflated premium on an inflated value. If you say your collection is worth $1 million. You are going to pay a higher premium that if you say your collection is worth $100,000.

The important thing is to have an inventory list of everything you have.

Who is the guy with the crazy card prices on ebay? I wonder what he values his inventory at :eek:

A bone-chilling turn of events. :eek:

Leon

Nice victory's. I think REA sold my SGC 20 McGraw POR for $3K. It was extremely clean and bold just creased once. Of course this was a few years back and before the rare back prices jumped and it was a new catalogued card so only one known. I imagine those beauts are $5k+ easy.

Mine sold in 2011:
http://www.robertedwardauctions.com/.../2011/480.html

Archived thread (I found the card raw at a try-star show in KC sold as a t206).
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=64094

Jason

I understand the higher premium. My concern is that without independent confirmation the process seems very susceptible to fraud.