If you sent us a request between 28 July and 5 August, it did not reach us. A fault on our form stopped some messages from coming through. Please call (301) 820-7664 or fill the form again. We're sorry for the inconvenience.
Artwork appraisals in New York for donations, estate tax, insurance, and divorce, prepared in accordance with USPAP and IRS requirements. AppraiseItNow appraises paintings, sculptures, prints, photography, and mixed media across New York, including New York City, Buffalo, and Albany.
DEFENSIBLE, USPAP-COMPLIANT ARTWORK APPRAISAL REPORTS — QUALIFIED FOR THE IRS, NEW YORK COURTS, LENDERS, INSURERS, AND MORE.
.jpeg)
Owner & CEO
Joe founded AppraiseItNow to make a certified, USPAP-compliant appraisal as simple to order as anything else online. A former Bain & Company strategy consultant, Joe leads the entire team and specializes in strategy, growth, and the firm's tech capabilities.
Personal Property Appraiser
ISA Accredited Member with 30 years in the trade, from running estate sales and an auction gallery to appraising luxury apparel, furniture, artwork, antiques, and business assets, primarily for IRS tax filings.
Personal Property Appraiser
ISA Accredited Member specializing in Asian art, with a Master's from SOAS and a Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art. Ashley chairs the ISA's Antiques, Furnishings, and Decorative Arts committee and appraises for charitable donation, insurance, and equitable distribution.
Client Success Manager
Manages each engagement from the first enquiry to the delivered report, and keeps you posted at every step along the way.
International Society of AppraisersAccredited Member
The Appraisal FoundationAuthorized by Congress as the source of appraisal standardsAppraiseItNow appraises fine art in New York for estates and trusts, for gifts to museums and other charities, for divorce, and for the schedules insurers write. Period furniture and decorative objects are valued as New York antiques instead. Every figure on a report here is built from sales that actually closed, each one named, so that a reader can go and look at the same evidence we did. A New York collection usually carries more paper than most, and that paper is where the reading starts.
Works on paper
Impression quality, the state of the sheet, margins, the printer and where a sheet falls within its edition can put two prints of the same image a long way apart. Two impressions pulled from one plate years apart are two different objects to the market.
Paintings and sculpture
Relining, overpaint, a replaced base or a repatinated surface all go on the record, because a buyer at the level these works trade at will find them and will price accordingly.
What a report is for sets its standard, and the thing that happened sets the day it speaks to. Both are settled before a single work is described. An insurer wants to know what putting the piece back would cost. An executor wants what it would have changed hands for on one particular day. A court wants a figure it can divide. Each of those readers leans on a different part of the report, which is why the standard and the date are settled on the first page rather than argued about on the last.
Estates and trusts
Everything in an estate report speaks to the same date, so works bought in different decades and different markets are all read against the record as it stood then.
Insurance
What the schedule says was on the wall is what an insurer pays on, so each line carries the artist, the medium, the size, the marks and the condition as last seen.
Divorce
A figure that has to survive both sides shows its working: the sales it rests on, the adjustments made against them and the reason for each one.
Three provisions of New York's Arts and Cultural Affairs Law sit behind the documents an art appraisal reads: what a consigned work is while a dealer holds it, what a written attribution commits a seller to, and what has to be disclosed before a print changes hands.
Consignment
Trust property
is what a consigned work and its proceeds are while a New York dealer holds them
Section 12.01 of the Arts and Cultural Affairs Law provides that when an artist, or the artist's successor in interest, delivers a work of fine art to an art merchant for exhibition or sale, that delivery creates a consignment, and it says so notwithstanding any custom or usage of the trade, any provision of the uniform commercial code and any other law. The work and the proceeds of its sale are trust property held for the consignor's benefit, segregated from the merchant's own property, and they do not pass to the merchant or to the merchant's bankruptcy estate. A consignor can waive parts of that protection only in a clear and conspicuous writing that the consignor has signed. For a valuation it answers a question that comes up whenever a work is out on consignment: whose asset it is while it hangs in somebody else's gallery.
Attribution
Attributed to
carries a meaning New York fixes in statute instead of leaving to the trade
Under section 13.01, a certificate or similar written instrument that an art merchant gives a buyer who is not a merchant is presumed to be part of the basis of the bargain and creates an express warranty for the material facts it states, as of the date of the sale. That warranty is hard to disclaim away: a disclaimer is unreasonable where it is not conspicuous or not separate from the warranty, where the work proves to be a counterfeit that the description did not clearly indicate, or where the information was false or mistaken on the day of sale. The section also fixes what the trade's shorthand means. A flat attribution to a named artist says that artist made the work. Attributed to a named artist says a work of that artist's period, credited to the artist but not with certainty. School of a named artist says a work of the period by a pupil or close follower, and not by the artist. A report written in New York is using defined terms when it uses those words.
Prints and photographs
$100
is where New York's disclosure duty begins on a print or a photograph
Article 15 governs visual art produced in multiples. An art merchant may not sell or consign a multiple into, out of or within the state unless the buyer or consignee is given a written instrument carrying the descriptive information the article requires, on request and in any event before the sale. At auction that information may sit in the catalogue, provided the bill of sale or invoice names the catalogue and the lot number, and a merchant who regularly sells multiples posts a conspicuous sign at each New York place of business saying the information is available. The notice the statute prescribes shows how far the duty reaches: prints and photographs sold for more than one hundred dollars each, exclusive of the frame, and sculpture sold for more than fifteen hundred dollars. What has to be disclosed is the identity of the artist, whether the artist signed the work, the medium, whether it is a reproduction, when it was produced, how the master was used and the size of a limited edition, which is the same list an appraisal needs before it can price one impression against another.
What clients say we are known for
Across 100+ published AppraiseItNow reviews the picture is consistent: every one is from a client who paid us for an appraisal, and the three things they raise most often are that they would hire us again, how quickly we answer, and how much research is visible in the report.
The appraisal was done very well. Since he was a local artist here in Charleston, SC, they took the time to study and review Jim Booth’s art. His work has made him extremely famous, which can make an appraisal challenging, but they did a superb job and clearly explained how they arrived at the appraisal value. I highly recommend Appraise It Now and will use them again for all my artwork.
Artwork Appraisal for Insurance Coverage
AppraiseItNow did an excellent job appraising our unique art collection. Joe was always prompt and responsive, and he and his team delivered a thorough, well-supported appraisal in just a couple of weeks, even during the holiday season. I was genuinely impressed. Thank you for the great work!
Artwork Appraisal for Insurance Coverage
AppraiseItNow was amazing! My father passed with a large volume of artwork & I had no idea what it was worth. Their team was incredibly helpful and quick to respond with text and/or email to any questions as well as a status update along the way. Highly recommend!
Artwork Appraisal for Probate
I recently requested a retroactive appraisal for fine art from AppraiseItNow. I received excellent service from intake to delivery. The appraisal was delivered on time and the content of the appraisal absolutely met my expectations!
Artwork Appraisal
From the start they were very responsive, price competitive, and had a quick turn around time. Thank you so much to Joe who was very sweet in responding to my emails; I am looking forward to utilizing AppraiseItNow for many years to come.
Very thorough and professional — great communication and outstanding service. Highly impressed with their work!
Given the USPAP-compliant nature of AppraiseItNow’s appraisal reports, we prepare our deliverables for major legal, tax, and financial reporting purposes for individual and commercial clients.
Popular uses of our appraisal reports include:
New York imposes its own estate tax, separate from the federal tax and with its own threshold and filing requirements, though it has no inheritance tax. Artwork held at death is part of the taxable estate and must be valued at fair market value when the estate exceeds the state's threshold, which makes defensible art appraisals a core part of New York estate administration.
Yes. Not-for-profit and religious corporations must obtain an independent appraisal before transferring personal property, prepared by an appraiser with no relationship to the buyer or seller and dated no more than 12 months before the purchase agreement. The appraisal informs the board of fair market value and supports review by the Attorney General's Charities Bureau.
An auction estimate is a non-binding opinion designed to stimulate bidding and manage consignor expectations; it is not built to meet IRS, insurance, or court standards. A formal appraisal states the value definition, discloses the method and the specific comparable sales relied on, and can be legally relied upon, which is what tax and litigation matters require.
It can. If a collector purchases a work elsewhere and later brings it into New York for use, display, or storage, the state can impose use tax on that first taxable use unless an exemption applies, and works kept in New York residences, studios, or warehouses fall squarely within the rule. The exposure follows the transaction and the first taxable use, not where the piece was originally hung.
In practice, yes. Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips all run major New York salerooms, and the city carries a dense dealer and gallery base, so American market comparables, sale velocity, and buyer depth for fine art are unusually well documented here. That depth is what lets a report cite closely matched sales instead of reaching for distant substitutes.
