Friday, February 25, 2011

An Appraisal

Recently I posted about quilt appraisals.  Road to California offers a chance for an appraisal while your quilt is on display there, so I had Peppermint Stars appraised. This is a replacement cost appraisal for insurance purposes,  the cost to have the quilt made again with similar materials and by quilter(s) of "similar skill and reputation." A market value appraisal might be different.

My result is as described by our guild speaker:  the two page report is totally objective, including things like size of blocks and borders, the colors, the patterns, the layout, type of fabric, quilting design, batting fiber, etc.  There are no judge-type comments at all.  The only subjective comment concerns the difficulty of the pieced design and quilting patterns.  As for the value assigned, I'll just say that I wouldn't be likely to buy this quilt!

The up side:  It's gratifying to see a nice monetary value on something you made, and to know that if something happens to it, you've got compensation.  It's also interesting to think that someone actually spent a lot of time examining the quilt.  (The judges apparently did not.)  The down side:  when I sent the quilt to the Smoky Mountain guild show, I insured it for its appraised value.  The resulting shipping cost made my jaw drop.  Homeowner's insurance covers the quilt in the home, but I'm not sure about en route to a show.  Before I do this again, I'll need to find out.

5 comments:

Nellie's Needles said...

Yeah, I'm going to get to see this quilt "for real" at our SMQ Guild show!

Libby Fife said...

I thought your comment about the quilt being examined in an objective way was interesting; that they really took time to look at it and assigned a monetary value to it. I shudder to think if you had to make it over again...:)

Barbara C said...

I'm sure it's good to know what your beautiful quilt is worth in the event that, god forbid, it gets lost in transit somewhere. Good for you for protecting your valuable work.

Debra Dixon said...

Shipping and show fees have basically taken me out of the running for most events unless I am really determined to have a piece in the show.

I think it's super that you now know the worth of your quilt. My guess is that we undervalue our work significantly.

McIrish Annie said...

it's good to know that all of your hard work is worth something!