Online Appraisal Service
An online appraisal service is an idea that has been around for a while and has been tried and tested by many. For collectible type items it looks to me like Ebay is the source of the information needed for good appraisals.
However, a full bores appraisal service would have to have permission to directly access the Ebay data files via their API, and that would n ot be cheap. In other words, getting an online appraisal service off the ground is probably a venture capital prospect. Assuming of course, the margines for doing appraisals will pay that well.
That leaves those of us who either don't have that kind of funding, or who don't have any interest in playing the venture capital game to look for a cheaper substitute we can put together on the cheap.
We are building a collection of sites that attempt to help sellers and collectors find the items in which they are interested more quickly and easily than they can with the standard ebay search tools. The fact is, Ebay sells millions of items every day, and can't possibly know anything about the details of the individual items. Some items, carved wood, for example are almost impossible to locate withuot getting a lot of unrelated auctions. with sites like EAPG we hope to cut through some of this to make a place where a collector and the person who is trying to identify a piece or two can easily find what they need to do their own appraisal.
By appraisal I mean collected a few pictures and sale prices of similiar items that can be stored with their other papers and found in the event of an insurance claim. This sort of appraisal will be plenty in many cases.