Other great tools for gauging interest and potential current market value are eBay sold prices (free to search), Terapeak (a paid service) and databases of historic auction records (also a paid service).
What is WorthPoint?
WorthPoint is a massive online database with more than 545 million antique prices, descriptions and images, as well as thousands of expert articles on a huge variety of topics.
The site offers a database that contains over a billion images as well as pricing and historical information for millions of antiques, art, and collectible items.
Reference Price Guides
Price guides for specific antiques or collectibles have long been available in book form and can be a great resource for pricing and identification. Most guidebooks are published yearly to stay up to date with the market, but even older books can help identify unusual collectibles that can’t be found anywhere else.
One of our favorite aspects of WorthPoint is its digital library which includes nearly 1,000 online copies of these sorts of books, with hundreds more added to the library each quarter.
The library contains everything from Schroeder’s Collectible Toys, to Garage Sale & Flea Market Annual, to Leather Bound Books Identification, to the Standard Antique Clock Value Guide.
You can search these digital books by topic, title, or publisher and read books page-by-page or click through to specific sections or chapters.
How is WorthPoint helpful?
WorthPoint’s search results go back over 15 years and combine over 350 sources of data including lots of major auction houses and eBay sales.
By contrast, eBay’s (free) tool to look up sold prices only goes back as far as 90 days, so the ability to see further into the past can be extremely helpful, especially for unusual collectibles that don’t come onto the market very often.
Prices from a very long time ago should be taken with some caution, however, because the antiques and collectibles market changes so often that prices an item commanded a few years ago may have gone up (or down) quite a bit.
Many WorthPoint users find the information and descriptions even more useful than sales prices.
Plus, there’s even a WorthPoint app so you can research items on the go if you are out and about at an antique shop or estate sale.
How much does WorthPoint cost?
WorthPoint offers a free 7-day trial which allows you to access their database and lookup the values for a few items.
If you like what you see, you can switch to a paid month-to-month subscription and continue your research. If you pay for a year-long membership, there’s a savings in cost.
WorthPoint offers three levels of membership access:
- Worthopedia® Price Guide: The ultimate online price guide including description details and images going back over 15 years
- Marks & Library: An identification and research guide featuring 100,000+ identifiers and digitized antiques and collectibles reference books
- All Access: Combines access to both the Worthopedia® Price Guide and the Marks & Library reference tools