The Personal Property Appraisers Post

I'm in the middle of reading The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel. This is a non-fiction work about a group of men and women enacted by various governments to preserve cultural art works during WWII. This question came to my mind. What role if any, does the professional appraiser play in regards to potentially looted or stolen property? What if in doing a house inspection, for any number of reasons, you find a great work of cultural art in an unsuspecting family's collection? WWII has been over for 60 plus years now. These items could have easily passed onto several other family members hands by now. Families who had no idea that this object could have been pillaged by or just bought on the street by "grandpa" decades ago. Objects that might even be listed in previous appraisals or estate settlements. What right do we have, if any, to report these findings and to whom would we report? I've searched USPAP and inquired with other seasoned appraisers only to get vague answers. Of course, I understand the articles of due diligence, our ethics and our code of conduct but unless information is requested by the government we're strictly confidential. What if our client is aware of it's history and provenance? And they thought that enough time had passed that no one remembered or cared. When should we know to cross a line and involve other authorities and how does this affect our relationship with our clients. I think that there are a lot of interesting questions here. Any answers??
Jerry Sampson

Hi Appraisers,

In this article, I will discuss using web resources to assist in object identification and object valuation. The intent of this article is to provide a framework for what is available to assist when identifying and appraising objects.

An interesting aspect of the internet is that there is no requirement for the accuracy of information and verifying claims made. It reminds me of the wild west, where anyone can post and say anything they want with little or no validation of the accuracy of the information.

What does this mean? It means that there is a lot of information to be obtained and it is up to the appraiser to review and determine the validity of the information and how useful it may be to identifying and assigning valuations to objects.

Search Engines
The standard search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are useful to help with object identification. While there are many print resources available, search engines can provide additional insight into a maker, a particular artist, and even images of same or similar objects.

Searching the web may be a supplement to using trusted sources like auction results databases. For example, a search for a little known artist may reveal additional information that is available since the latest print information about that artist.

With the explosion of blogs that are updated frequently, there is a good possibility that additional information is available all the time about artists, makers, and objects.