How to Identify an Antique When You See One

Identifying antiques is no easy task. People dedicate their lives to learning about the intricacies and nuances in old, valuable objects, calling on a detailed knowledge of construction, workmanship, and materials to appraise historical items.

If you're new to collecting, look for these key elements to determine whether that too-good-to-be-true flea market find is really as old as it looks—or is just a well-made reproduction.

How Old Is an Antique?

For most amateur collectors, the thrill of the hunt is based on adding a beloved piece to their lot—not picking up items simply for their monetary value. And you don't have to choose a category of antiques, which are defined as items more than 100 years old, to appreciate the joy of collecting. "If your thing is Pokemon cards, and you love them, then it's not an antique, but I don't think it's any less valuable as a personal collection," says Sean Scherer of Kabinett and Kammer.

Even if you are committed to a collection of items with more than a century of history behind them, there's no guarantee that you've chosen something more financially worthwhile than a more recent category. "Old things aren’t necessarily more valuable," says Sarah Reeder of Artifactural History Appraisal. "The market is impacted by a lot of complicated factors, so newer items that are merely vintage, rather than antique, may actually be more valuable."

While reproductions and fakes do exist on the market, most sellers aren't trying to trick amateur buyers, says Scherer. "There's not a lot of money to be made in making fake stuff," he says. "If you're buying something that might look like an aged ceramic dish, it's not going to be priced that much different from the real vintage or antique ceramic dish. The incentive of the forger is to try to fake the Regency credenza they can get $50,000 for."

However, if you want to make sure you're adding authentic antiques to your collection, consider the following factors when browsing your local flea market, secondhand store, or antique fair.

Weight

If you've ever moved modern, big box-store furniture into a new home alongside your grandparents' antique dresser, you already know that older pieces tend to have more weight to them. "A 19th-century piece of furniture obviously weighs a lot more than a 20th-century piece of furniture," says Scherer. "They're made of heavier woods, they're better constructed."

This also holds true for items like dishware and decorative objects. "Things are either thicker-walled, or better constructed," says Scherer. "They have a little more heft than a modern-day object. It's the old cliche: They were built to last."

Construction Techniques

Having a working knowledge of the construction techniques used in the pieces you're trying to collect can help you tell copies from genuine pieces even more quickly. "Certain styles, like Chippendale furniture, have been popular and continuously made for literally hundreds of years, so it can be tricky to tell if a Chippendale chair was made in the 18^th century or last year just by looking at it from a distance across a room," says Reeder. "If I turn over a Chippendale-style chair and I see evidence of power tools and contemporary screws in the construction, I know this is most likely not an antique piece."

Proportion

Proportions are another way experts identify furniture from different eras, as pieces made at different times will take a lead from their contemporaries. "Often, a historical design made in a later era will be subtly influenced by the style of the time it was made," says Reeder. "Colonial Revival furniture made in the 19^th and 20^th centuries often has slightly distorted proportions compared to the original 18^th-century examples. If something about the proportions of a piece doesn't look right, that's a clue for me to inspect the other characteristics very carefully."

Signs of Wear

As pieces age, they wear in ways that are both consistent and inconsistent: Consistent, because you can guarantee there will be wear of some kind, but inconsistent, because items in daily use don't get worn evenly, says Scherer. He uses the example of a dough board, where the center of an authentic piece is likely to show more wear than the edges. "If someone is reproducing, they're not going to be that clever to think about how a real dough board would look if it was worn," he says. "On fakes or reproductions, they usually make the patina or the wear all-over, and it almost looks like a pattern."

Legitimate signs that an object has been in use for decades include tarnish or patina on jewelry, scratches and imperfections on wood furniture, chips, hairline cracks, or crazing on dishes, dents, dings, loss of paint, or other signs of use on any object, or areas of repair, like solder joints, mismatched nails, or recent cuts to a pieces edge or feet. Scherer often looks at the feet of chairs, tables, or dressers for signs of age. "The edges won't be sharp, because they're not brand new—they'll be curved, they'll be banged up," he says.

Maker's Marks

A maker's mark is one of the main clues in figuring out an item's age. These marks can also tell us who made the item and where. To locate a potential marking, look underneath the object and in hidden spots. Remember, not everything will have a maker's mark, so don't give up hope if you can't find one.

Maker's marks can come in the form of a label, tag, imprint, or signature. "One of my favorite tricks to help identify a maker's mark is to do a Google Reverse Image Search of a picture of the mark," says Reeder. Upload a photo of the mark to your computer, and then drag it into a Google Image search; the search engine will look for similar photos that match it. (You can also describe the mark in a traditional web search.

Workmanship

Closely examine items like furniture, china, and jewelry for indicators of traditional workmanship. One example: Look inside dresser drawers for dovetailing, an older technique used to connect a drawer face to the sides of the drawer. In general, older pieces of furniture had wider dovetail joints, while handmade dovetail joints are slightly irregular and custom to the furniture.

"Identifying which secondary woods were used to create the dovetailed drawer sides can provide you with information about where the antique furniture piece was likely made," says Reeder. "For example, antique furniture made in the southeast region of the United States often used tulip poplar wood (which has a distinctive greenish color) as the secondary wood for dovetailed drawer sides."