Intake criteria
Far more is offered than is taken. Sellers read a refusal as a verdict on the object, and it usually is not. It is a verdict on the fit between that object and that business.
Does it clear the economic floor
Every intake carries fixed work: recording it, describing it, photographing it, storing it, moving it, invoicing it. That work costs roughly the same whether the piece makes a small sum or a large one.
Below some threshold the result cannot cover it, and the answer is no. The threshold varies enormously between businesses, which is why an item refused by one house is routinely accepted by another that operates differently.
Do their buyers want this
A business builds an audience over years and that audience has specific interests. An object outside them will sell poorly however good it is, because the people who would compete for it are not in the room.
This is the most common reason for a refusal and the least understood by sellers. The right response is not to argue but to ask who does handle this kind of thing. Specialists are usually generous with that answer, because sending a piece to the right place costs them nothing and earns goodwill.
Can they establish what it is
A saleroom is putting its name to the description. If nobody there can say with confidence what an object is, they will decline rather than publish a guess, and they are right to.
Objects with no documentation, no marks and no obvious attribution fall here. So does anything whose value depends entirely on a claim nobody can support. A seller who can supply receipts, correspondence or earlier catalogue entries changes this calculation substantially, which is a good reason to look for the paperwork before making the approach. Anyone weighing whether it is worth the effort should read which channel suits an item before trusting any single opinion of what it is worth.
Is it legal and clean to sell
Some categories carry restrictions on what may be traded, and a business that gets this wrong faces consequences well beyond a lost commission. Anything involving protected species material, certain weapons, and items whose ownership history has gaps in sensitive periods will attract questions.
The answers are not always no, but they are always slower. A seller who volunteers the documentation at the outset gets a decision faster than one who waits to be asked.
How to make the approach
What arrives determines what comes back. A folder of clear photographs, measurements, and any paperwork gets a considered reply. A paragraph of description without images generally gets a polite request for photographs, which costs a week.
Say what you have and what you want. Somebody clearing a property to a deadline needs different advice from somebody with one piece and no hurry, and a specialist who knows which situation they are in gives a more useful answer. Volunteering the deadline early is particularly worth doing, because it may rule out that business entirely and both sides would rather know.
Do not ask for a valuation. It is a different service with a different price, and asking for one free of charge marks the approach as unserious. What you are asking is whether they would take it and roughly what they would expect, which is a question businesses answer readily because it is how they find stock.
Making an approach that gets a considered answer
- Send clear photographs: the whole object, the back or underside, and every mark or label at a legible size.
- Include measurements, and any paperwork you have.
- Say what you have and what you want, because advice for one piece differs from advice for a house.
- Volunteer any deadline early. It may rule that business out, and both sides would rather know now.
- Do not ask for a valuation. That is a different service with a price; ask whether they would take it and roughly what they would expect.
- Approach several businesses at once. Nothing is exclusive until an agreement is signed.
What a refusal is worth knowing
A declined object still carries information, and a seller who asks the right follow-up gets value out of a disappointing answer.
Ask whether the refusal is about the object or about the fit. Those are entirely different answers: the first means reconsidering whether it is worth selling at all, the second means finding the right business. Ask who does handle this kind of material, because specialists generally know and there is no cost to them in saying.
Ask whether it would be accepted as part of a larger group. Businesses that will not take one modest item will frequently take it alongside better pieces, because the handling cost is then spread. That single question converts a good many refusals into acceptances.
It is also worth remembering that intake decisions are made by people with a finite amount of attention. An approach that is easy to assess gets assessed. One that requires somebody to extract the relevant facts from a long message competes badly against the thirty other enquiries that arrived the same week, and it loses for reasons that have nothing to do with the object.
Common questions
Is it worth approaching several places at once?
Yes, and it is normal practice at the enquiry stage. Nothing is exclusive until an agreement is signed, and different businesses will give genuinely different views on the same object because they are thinking about different buyers. What is not reasonable is letting two of them do a full assessment while intending to use only one, without saying so.
How long should a reply take?
A few working days is normal for a straightforward enquiry with good photographs, and longer around a sale when the specialists are occupied. Silence beyond a couple of weeks usually means the answer is no rather than that the message was missed, though a polite follow-up costs nothing. Anybody working to a deadline should approach several businesses at once rather than waiting on each in turn.