[NHCOLL-L:2419] Re: Donation appraisals

[sam]

Doug-

You hit the nail squarely on the head once, then again, and yet again.

Cheers,
Sam
Avinet, Inc.
______________________________________________________

At 06
:19 PM 9/8/2004, you wrote:
>>2) The commercial value of a collection is often only a third of the
>>appraised value. Sometimes maybe 50%. This allows a dealer to recover
>>costs for picking up a collection, cataloging it, advertising it, and then
>>waiting until it sells. They have to may some margin of profit as well.
>>When my Dad was alive and collected coins, he had two books, one listed
>>the "value of a coin" the other what a dealer would pay for that coin. The
>>differences were sometimes quite far apart.
>
>This particular problem has been largely eliminated nowadays, thanks to 
>the virtual elimination of middlemen in the collectibles market (due to 
>eBay and other online auction services). You no longer have to sell to a 
>dealer, but can sell directly to whoever wants the item. The result is 
>that for most collectibles, people who want to sell can get more than they 
>ever could get from dealers, and people who want to buy can get things 
>cheaper than they ever could from dealers; that is, the actual market 
>value, once the middlemen are gone, tends to be less than "catalog value", 
>but better than the 30-50% price that is quoted above.
>
>If anything, natural history-related collectibles, by virtue of their not 
>having prices set by well-known standard catalogs, seem to be worth MORE 
>now than ever before, thanks largely to extremely naive buyers who 
>overvalue things in the process of competitive bidding. I've seen one eBay 
>dealer who routinely sells common insects in cheap Riker mounts for 
>exorbitant prices - for example, a pair of Luna moths with a starting 
>price of US$80 (when specimens of similar or superior quality can be 
>purchased through regular insect dealers for 5 dollars a pair or less), 
>and they've sold dozens of such pairs, often getting well more than the 
>$80 starting price. As long as one doesn't have an ethical problem with 
>bilking the rubes, one could make quite a killing selling specimens this 
>way. Myself, I find it reprehensible, but I'm often reminded that so it 
>goes with fools and their money.
>
>That being said, however...
>
>For tax purposes, the crucial thing in the US is this: you must be able to 
>demonstrate, with tangible proof (if audited), that the value given is 
>equal to "fair market value". So, if you have trilobites or ammonites or 
>such, and there is a commercial catalog in print somewhere which sells 
>equivalent specimens (of the same taxa), then THAT method of valuation is 
>essentially the only one that the IRS will accept other than a paid 
>appraiser, and only so long as the total estimated value is between 
>$500-$5000 (following IRS form 8283). Anything over $5000 *requires* 
>formal appraisal, like it or not.
>
>Sincerely,
>--
>
>Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
>Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0314
>phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
>              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
>   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
>