Giuseppe Palizzi Oil Painting, ca. 1850
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GUEST:
I was walking down an alley and I saw it laying next to a Dumpster. It reached out to me, so I reached out to it.
APPRAISER:
Literally.
GUEST:
Yeah!
APPRAISER:
It's a tricky little signature actually down here. It's actually an Italian artist whose name is Giuseppe Palizzi, and he was born in Italy in 1812. He ended up, he died in Paris, in fact, in 1888. Did you give any thought as to what the value might be when you saw it?
GUEST:
Well, because of where I found it, I didn't give it much value at all. Like I say, I just really liked the subject matter.
APPRAISER:
It has had its scratches. As you tend to expect when a painting is found beside a Dumpster. It's not been treated that well. So we can see them here, and quite a few scratches down here as well. So the condition isn't great, but in spite of all that, I think at auction, fairly safely, it should fetch around about $3,000 to $5,000 or so.
GUEST:
Nice.
Appraisal Details
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Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
Note the date: Take note of the date the appraisal was recorded. This information appears in the upper left corner of the page, with the label "Appraised On." Values change over time according to market forces, so the current value of the item could be higher, lower, or the same as when our expert first appraised it.
Context is key: Listen carefully. Most of our experts will give appraisal values in context. For example, you'll often hear them say what an item is worth "at auction," or "retail," or "for insurance purposes" (replacement value). Retail prices are different from wholesale prices. Often an auctioneer will talk about what she knows best: the auction market. A shop owner will usually talk about what he knows best: the retail price he'd place on the object in his shop. And though there are no hard and fast rules, an object's auction price can often be half its retail value; yet for other objects, an auction price could be higher than retail. As a rule, however, retail and insurance/replacement values are about the same.
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