My son has this old antique desk that he would like to sell. He acquired it from a guy in California that said he inherited it from his great grandfather. He was told it was a captain's desk from an old ship. Whether this is true or not I don't know, and there is no documentation to support this. All I know is that it is old and it is heavy. It has a leather top on it.
It does not have original drawer pulls on it as someone has changed them. We are trying to figure out how old it is and how much it is worth. It is currently in southwest Montana, so I would have to go and get it. Do you know of a dealer that deals in this kind of furniture?
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This is very cool!! My guess is late 19th century, early 20th century, but not seeing it in person it is hard to tell.
This is not the kind of piece to sell on your own. Not sure where your son is, but I suggest he find 2-3 reputable auction houses that specialize in antique furniture and have them give him estimates for them to auction. They will take a commission, but they will get it in front of eyes that are interested in cool pieces like this.
If it is as solid and good condition as it looks, it could fetch a pretty penny--even if it is not from a ship.
The details and barley twist sides make it fascinating.
If he is near Bozman, maybe this place can get him started:
northamericanauctioncompany.com/
Post back how it goes!! Thanks for sharing!
Nice!
Pretty elaborate for a ship's desk but that will not matter anyway because your son does not have real provenance except since the day he purchased it.
A qualified appraiser will have to supply some earlier history for an item like this.
Since your son is in southwest Montana I would suggest he start looking for auction houses that maybe specialize in antique furniture but it seems that may be difficult to find as it appears most auctions are dealing with farm property/equipment and real estate. I feel sure there are some auction houses that sell antiques but he may have to wade through a lot of sites to find the best site for this desk. All of this will be very time consuming but if he has a written list of questions to ask each place it may go faster.
He may be near one of the larger cities in Montana but he should also consider bordering states - maybe Wyoming or Idaho - when doing his search as they may have better antique auctions than Montana.
I would suggest he deal only with auction houses that also have online bidding as Montana is pretty remote from potential buyers of an item like this.
Choose an auction house that has appraisal service as well as photography as he will need both of these services or he may not realize the true value of this desk.
All of these services will cost monies out of the sale and the auction company will have fees so he will have to take all of this into account before he makes his final decision.
He may decide to try and find an antique house in one of the larger cities and let them sell it on commission. This may be a slow sell but not so scary.
There are numerous auction sites listed online as well as antique dealers so try Google with whatever type of site he is interested in and whatever cities he can reach and go from there.
www.google.com/
It does look like an old piece. The dovetail drawers look like they were crafted by hand instead of machine.
Nowadays with everything digital, Im sure you could locate a dealer who could give you an appraisal from the pictures you posted.
These links may give you some information:
www.justanswer.com/
www.thesprucecrafts.com/
There are a few Captains desk online, I could not find one like this one. they range from a few hundred to up in the thousands. www.ebay.com/
Look for the serial number (maybe somewhere on the back side or at the bottom). By the serial number you can find out the year of manufacture of this desk (the first two numbers mean the year, for example 11 means 1911)
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