Attic Find Sells For.... A Lot.

[AmScray 355]

Cliffs: Dead relative, cleaning out attic, find old Chinese vase. Any number of times down through the years, said vase had been declared a fake and returned to the attic, including on an early incarnate of the UK Antiques Roadshow, where it was called a 'clever forgery'.Someone finally got around to bringing it to a legitimately qualified person (the antiquities field is just LITTERED with bullshitting "experts" who are unqualified hack frauds). Legitimate expert immediately realized what it was- that it was not fake (undoubtedly had it TL tested to confirm)- and ultimately appraised it for $2,000,000. Word spread through the ultra high-end Chinese antique buyers market about this vase, discovered in England and now selling at a small, local auction house, that once sat in the Chinese Royal Palace in the 18th Century. How it got to England, no one knows. http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-an...tml?from=smh_sbIt sold for

about $60,000,000+, with buyers premiums and fees, around $80,000,000.

Auctioneer breaks gavel.Lessons learned here:- Asians have terrible taste, but an increasing amount of disposable income. - Don't trust antiques 'experts' unless they really, really are 'experts'- and even the ones who 'really, really are experts' are still about 1/2 clueless frauds.- Poor gavel workmanship can have a consequence at the least opportune times. Exploding gavel, dramatic flair? Yes, but now, the man's out one gavel.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

I'd say at least a few thousand of the family's money should go toward hiring a team of goons to beat the $% out of the guy who appraised it and told them it was a fake. He could have essentially denied them $80 million if it wasn't for their persistence.At the very least, I'd hire a team of interns to make annoying calls to him in the middle of the night.

[AmScray 355]

I'd say at least a few thousand of the family's money should go toward hiring a team of goons to beat the $% out of the guy who appraised it and told them it was a fake. He could have essentially denied them $80 million if it wasn't for their persistence.At the very least, I'd hire a team of interns to make annoying calls to him in the middle of the night.

I was watching the original broadcast of the Roadshow when "watch expert" Kevin Zavian appraised a collection of oversized DeLong escapements- as "salesmans samples" for $4K-$6K. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/200404A22.htmlThat one actually made it onto TV. The howling from Horology forums was immediate- to think, those people may have sold them for $4K. Obviously, not in the same league as calling an $80,000,000 Vase a worthless fake, but an example of the sort of shit that goes on every day in antique shops, estate sales and professional appraisals. Really, so many 'appraisers' are egomaniacal hacks with C- internet research skills. They love their position as an 'authority', so they never bother to honestly say when something is out of their league, when their base of knowledge isn't broad enough to appraise something to completion. Rather than saying "I think you might have something here... I'm not totally sure of the details, but based on my research, this warrants more significantly examination..." they pull a number out of their ass and thats that. The good news is, for Rainmen like myself who spend every waking minute of our entire pathetic lives soaking up information on the internet, tend to remember what anything ever sells for at auction and can intuitively recognize special stuff' with 99.999% accuracy, the potential to profit from those retards (including antique shops, etc) is immense.

[mtdesmoines 3]

- Poor gavel workmanship can have a consequence at the least opportune times. Exploding gavel, dramatic flair? Yes, but now, the man's out one gavel.

has $9m to spend on new one tho

[hblask 1]

Another surprise when attempting to sell some junk from around the house.

[Canuckickstan 2]

Another surprise when attempting to sell some junk from around the house.

The best part of that story is the picture of the guy wearing the watch with a stoned superman. Awesome.

[AmScray 355]

double post. meant to edit.

[AmScray 355]

Another surprise when attempting to sell some junk from around the house.

Testimony to the efficiency of the ebay marketplace as long as your title keywords are within ballpark-range of being accurate, but I do have to wonder how much longer we have of people thinking a Rolex is 'household junk' and might sell for a 'few bucks', especially with all the "finds" shows we have now (Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Antiques Roadshow, some new one about people who hawk expired Storage Units, etc, etc, etc)I remember years ago- around 2000- thinking to myself how amazing it would be to have 'internet in my pocket' when scouting garage sales, flea markets, etc... At that time, it was all intuition and abstract knowledge. The better you were about knowing a little about a lot of things, the better your profit ratio was... but you still ran into random crap priced *just highly* enough to warrant more research. Of course, back then you had to make a snap decision, right there since there were no internet browsers on cel phones... I was a nuclear power in that arms race, back then, because I had smart people who knew how to run a decent Google search (still a rarefied skill at that time) and I could call them for more info. Needless to say, since that time, the internet has had a gigantic impact on garage sales and flea markets in terms of culling out a lot of the great finds, but even on those rare occasions where you bump into something that might be worthwhile, you now have everyone walking around with smartphones, doing research on the spot. If the good stuff pops up, its gone almost instantly. I think the whole game as we know it might have another 5-10 years left in it. After that time, forget it. Too few clueless old-timers left cleaning out basements, too many internet savvy people with unlimited information at their fingertips. Flea Markets and Antique Shows in Chicagoland are brutal like this. Everyone is a yuppie with a smartphone, the skill aspect is almost totally gone from the game (almost). I'm going to have to start traveling out to the markets in various rural Boogervilles to find any scalps worth taking.

[ajs510 122]

What I want to know (apart from the story behind the Christopher Reeve picture) is how anyone looks at that picture of the watch on Ebay and magically gleans the info that the watch is something super-special that should carry a massive pricetag. To me there isn't anything different about that Rolex that sets it massively apart from any other picture of a Rolex I've seen, so what makes it noticeably special?

[AmScray 355]

What I want to know (apart from the story behind the Christopher Reeve picture) is how anyone looks at that picture of the watch on Ebay and magically gleans the info that the watch is something super-special that should carry a massive pricetag. To me there isn't anything different about that Rolex that sets it massively apart from any other picture of a Rolex I've seen, so what makes it noticeably special?

Uh, it's 'collector stuff', almost always completely irrational. The difference between a $40 coin and a $4000 coin might be a microscopic letter "S" somewhere on the surface.Collectors know minutiae, like variety and are usually willing to pay extravagant prices for things that are rare and otherwise accepted as a 'holy grail' by the larger collecting community.

[brvheart 1,752]

I was watching the original broadcast of the Roadshow when "watch expert" Kevin Zavian appraised a collection of oversized DeLong escapements- as "salesmans samples" for $4K-$6K. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/200404A22.htmlThat one actually made it onto TV. The howling from Horology forums was immediate- to think, those people may have sold them for $4K. Obviously, not in the same league as calling an $80,000,000 Vase a worthless fake, but an example of the sort of shit that goes on every day in antique shops, estate sales and professional appraisals. Really, so many 'appraisers' are egomaniacal hacks with C- internet research skills. They love their position as an 'authority', so they never bother to honestly say when something is out of their league, when their base of knowledge isn't broad enough to appraise something to completion. Rather than saying "I think you might have something here... I'm not totally sure of the details, but based on my research, this warrants more significantly examination..." they pull a number out of their ass and thats that. The good news is, for Rainmen like myself who spend every waking minute of our entire pathetic lives soaking up information on the internet, tend to remember what anything ever sells for at auction and can intuitively recognize special stuff' with 99.999% accuracy, the potential to profit from those retards (including antique shops, etc) is immense.

You've left out some important information.

[frautotenkinder 1,025]

I think the whole game as we know it might have another 5-10 years left in it.

I think up to a point, but now what's going to elevate the purchase power is being able to predict where the decorative arts market is moving. Five years from now, what's going to be the new owl figurines?

[Tactical Bear 3]

Uh, it's 'collector stuff', almost always completely irrational. The difference between a $40 coin and a $4000 coin might be a microscopic letter "S" somewhere on the surface.Collectors know minutiae, like variety and are usually willing to pay extravagant prices for things that are rare and otherwise accepted as a 'holy grail' by the larger collecting community.

One of my regular players is a wealthy farmer and avid coin collector (I can't remember the word, but I know it kinda sounds like "Newmanologist"), and yesterday he brought something in to show me.Farmer: "What's the most money you've ever had in one hand at once?"Wang: "I dunno. Couple thousand. Any more than that I need two hands."Farmer: (Reaches into his bag, hands me a nickel in an expensive-looking case) "Here."Wang: "Ah. Cool looking."Farmer: "Do you have a camera phone?"Wang: "Yeah."Farmer: "Okay. Let me take a picture of you with that."Wang: "Uh... okay."Farmer: (Takes picture of me holding coin)Wang: (Hands coin back)Farmer: "One sixty, give or take."Wang: (Marginally prepared for this) "One hundred and sixty... thousand?"Farmer: "Ayuh. I turned down one hundred and sixty a little while back. Friend of mine had never seen one, so I took it out of the bank today and didn't want to leave it at home while I came up to play tonight. I'll just drop it in the little slot tonight after I leave here."Wang: "One hundred and sixty... thousand?"Farmer: "Dollars yup." Wang: "May I see it again?"

[hblask 1]

Wang: (Marginally prepared for this) "One hundred and sixty... thousand?"Farmer: "Ayuh. I turned down one hundred and sixty a little while back. Friend of mine had never seen one, so I took it out of the bank today and didn't want to leave it at home while I came up to play tonight. I'll just drop it in the little slot tonight after I leave here."Wang: "One hundred and sixty... thousand?"Farmer: "Dollars yup." Wang: "May I see it again?"

I have no idea what the bolded there means in this context.

[strategy 4]

numismatist.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

I have no idea what the bolded there means in this context.

Night deposit slot, back at the bank.

[AmScray 355]

You've left out some important information.

What?

[nutzbuster 7]

The Comet tho

[Tactical Bear 3]

What?

What are the DeLong escapements actually worth? He appraised them for 4-6K, but we don't know how huge of a mistake that is.

[AmScray 355]

What are the DeLong escapements actually worth?

Somewhere between "shit-ton" and "metric assload"Six figures.