Appraising art and giving it value. Why do you need an appraiser?
Many people find amusement in speculating and discussing about the price of an art piece or collection. We may believe we know the value of an art piece by the price we paid for it. We may believe we know the value of an art piece because we are acquainted with the artist who created it. We may assume we know about prices because we are art connoisseurs.
But, what happens when we buy art, or want to negotiate, quote, insure, donate, appraise with legal purposes or take part in transactions involving authentic works of art. It is then, when dealing with art as an investment and with art value, that the figure of an appraiser becomes essential.
Who We Are At Valia Garzon
Valia Garzon Art Services, is a company that provides services to collectors, artists, institutions and other companies related to the art world. Thinking on all the wide range of individuals and entities that require our services, we have structured this highly useful information about the importance of having a professional appraisal for art pieces.
Let's start by saying that the art business is not completely regulated. Anybody may call himself or herself an artist or art dealer, open a gallery or sell whatever he or she might wish to sell claiming it is art; anybody can put whatever price to that presumed art. As long as they operate within the law, and don’t fall into fraud or misrepresentation, there would be nothing illegal about their practice. The same piece of art could deliberately be valued at $ 1000, $ 10000, $ 100,000, or more, even if it makes sense or not. Believe it, it happens. It often and normally happens, and it is perfectly legal, that somebody puts a price to an art piece, and finds somebody else willing to pay that price.
Adding to this, a significant number of transactions take place in a variety of environments such as galleries, auction houses, exhibitions, private negotiations or through art dealers and counselors. Appraisers are especially helpful in these realms. A professional appraiser will be capable of establishing fair market prices regardless of the surrounding circumstances and will also provide the most updated and accurate price information possible.
Let’s suppose you inherited (or have possessed for years or decades) a piece of art, and decide it is time to sell it. Without knowing the actual and current value of the piece, you are an easy target for unscrupulous buyers offering you a certain price way below its actual price. You might sell your piece really cheap without having any idea of what you are doing, and should that happen, you would have very few or no resources to recover your losses. A professional art appraiser will protect you from that kind of unfortunate outcome.
Figuring out how much an art piece is worth, and then buy, sell, donate or trade with that price is no easy task for art experts. An experienced appraiser will research, and analyze details relevant to the piece, the artist’s career background, the markets, and the current trends before establishing how much that art piece is worth. Typical research includes reviewing the artist's resumé and artistic achievements, examining his recent market performance and assessing the piece’s turnover level, including his size, subject, detail, level of artistry, ownership history, age, condition, how it compares to other pieces by the artist, and so on. It is a task about detail and research.
Tips When Deciding to Use an Appraiser
Valia Garzon Art Services wish to provide you with some tips to help you decide when and how to use a professional art appraiser in scenarios of "art and money":
If you are an artist, a professional art appraiser familiarized with your kind of art will guarantee that your prices are market aligned and correspond to your professional career. Reasonable prices facilitate sales. The appraiser can also teach you how to explain your prices to an interested person. It is always easier to sell art to people who understand what kind of value they are getting for their money.
Whether you have an authentic piece of art that has never been valued or if you need information about its current price, ask an appraiser to value it, or, at least, contact him regarding insurance for damage and robbery.
Do not ask for a free valuation, also avoid an oral valuation by all means. Appraisers need to research and make thorough documentations to give your piece an appropriate value within the market. Requesting an oral valuation will placed the appraiser at a complex crossroads, and yourself in a disadvantageous position, since you would not have an appraisal compliant with the parameters used today.
Update your pieces’ appraisals frequently, and always before transferring the ownership of any art piece you may have. Prices fluctuate with the passing of time. The updating of appraisals is mainly conducted for insurance purposes.
If you don’t know how to use them, be wary of art price guides, auction logs, online prices, databases and other types of reference materials. They are fine for unofficial purposes or leisure, but, unless you know how to analyze, and extrapolate your data, you are at risk of making a serious mistake.
Unless you already know the value of your art piece, never accept spontaneous or unsolicited cash offers by anyone trying to buy it. This kind of offers is usually a cheap one. Consult a professional art appraiser first.
Seek the opinion of an appraiser before buying art from distributors or galleries you are not familiar or has never had any contact with, especially if you are buying online at a fixed price or on auction sites where you cannot be sure who the actual seller is.
Seek the opinion of an appraiser before buying pieces from artists whose names, work and market background you are not familiar with. It will not suffice to know the artist's name or read an article or two about him or her.
Unless you are dealing with an experienced auction bidder, always ask an appraiser to examine the art you wish to buy before making an offer. This applies specially when buying at online auctions. Online auctions can be extremely dangerous environments for buying art.
Regardless of the type of acquisition, if you are not 100% sure about what you are doing, ask an appraiser any questions you may have about the art piece, the artist or the circumstances surrounding the acquisition. You want to do that before buying, not afterwards. You would be surprise by the amount of people who do not ask questions until after having spent hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars. And it could be very late by then. Saving your money before hand is a lot easier than trying to get it back after is spent.
Never get rid of any piece of art you may have, no matter how bad your feelings might be for that person you got it from, its condition or how irrelevant you may think its creator is. You could be surprised. Always have an experienced professional examine the piece and complete a valuation for it.
Paying for a professional service will save you thousands of dollars.