How to identify inherited antiques, one box at a time
You have inherited a house, a garage, or six boxes of newspaper-wrapped things, and nobody left a list. Patina is being built so you can photograph one object at a time and get a plain-English read on maker, era and origin, with a stated confidence level and a flag when the answer genuinely needs a human appraiser.
Patina is not open yet, so anything on this page about what it does is what it is being built to do.
The boxes came with no list
An inherited estate almost never arrives as a collection. It arrives as a hallway of boxes, a drawer of flatware that may or may not be silver, and a garage of things wrapped in old newspaper. There is no inventory, and the one person who knew what everything was is the reason you are standing in the room.
The questions then arrive in roughly the same order for everyone, and they are the questions people type into forums every week. "Do You Know What This Is?" "Need Help ID this vintage silverware? it is stamped, see pics." "I really need some help identifying this antique silver stuff I found." When general search fails, people say so in exactly those words: "cannot find much of anything on google."
You do not have one object and unlimited time. You have thirty objects and a weekend.
What the usual tools give you
A general image search tends to surface whatever is currently for sale, which is mostly modern production. Collector forums are generous and often brilliant, and the standard first reply, "Photos of the marks would help," tells you exactly how an expert starts, but they answer on their own schedule, and posting thirty objects one at a time is not a plan. An appraiser is the right answer for some of what you are holding and an expensive answer for the rest, and the hard part is knowing which is which before you have paid anyone. Patina is being built for that gap, the part between picking something up and knowing whether it deserves an expert's attention.
The decision in front of you is triage, not valuation
You are not trying to price an estate this weekend. You are trying to sort a large pile of unfamiliar objects into a small pile that warrants a specialist and a larger pile that probably does not, so that the specialist's time goes where it earns its keep.
Why we never print a dollar value
Patina never gives a dollar value. Not as a range, not as a hint, not as a comparison to something that sold somewhere. Identification is our job, valuation is someone else's, and we would rather say that plainly than dress up a guess as a figure. What a photograph can give you is a likely maker, an era, an origin and a straight statement of how sure the model is, and every result carries a standing reminder that it is an AI-generated estimate rather than an expert appraisal, and not a basis for a decision to buy or sell. Experienced collectors already say you should "treat any app result as a starting point, not a final verdict," and we agree with them loudly rather than quietly.
How to work through an inherited house, one object at a time
- Walk the rooms and flag what makes you pause
Go through once with a marker and a roll of tape, and flag the objects that stop you: a visible mark, an unfamiliar shape, unusual weight, a finish that does not look like anything sold today. Then pick those things up, open the drawers, and check the back and the underside, which is what every guide to walking an estate tells you to do. Ceramics usually carry their marks on the base or foot rim. Silver and plate often hide theirs on an underside, a rim, a handle join or the back of a spoon. Wipe the dust off gently and get the light coming across the mark rather than straight at it. Ordinary
- Photograph it where it stands
Capture is built for a phone, either taking a photo with the device camera or choosing one you already have, so you shoot the object in the room you are standing in. Under the photo there is an optional field for anything you already know, a legible maker's mark, a family story, the shelf it stood on, so the read starts from what you can see rather than from a guess.
- Read maker, era and origin, and treat the confidence as the real output
The photo goes to an AI vision model that returns a likely maker, an era, an origin and a confidence level, written the way a knowledgeable friend would say it out loud rather than as a database entry. No price, no valuation, and a persistent note that this is an estimate rather than an appraisal. A confident read gives you a name to search and a period to place the object in. A low-confidence read is information too, usually a worn mark, an ambiguous form, or a family of look-alikes one photograph cannot separate, and the result screen carries a button to add a detail and check again, which r
- Let the flagged objects become the appraiser's list
When confidence falls below Patina's threshold, the result carries an appraisal triage flag and a referral link to an independent appraisal service, so the uncertain pieces have somewhere to go. Those services are independent businesses we have no partnership with, and the link carries a tag naming Patina and nothing about you or your scan. By the end of the weekend, that flagged set is your short list.
- Keep your own inventory alongside the app
Your account keeps your last ten scans, each one holding the identification and two to four plain sentences about the maker and the period the piece comes from, which is enough to look back at yesterday's sideboard but not enough to hold a whole house. For an estate, pair it with a notebook or a spreadsheet: room, object, what the scan said, and whether it was flagged. The scan history is your short-term memory, not the estate's record.
What this gives you when the whole house is unfamiliar
A second opinion while the object is still in your hands
The hardest moments in an inherited estate come when nobody in the room has a name for the thing they are looking at. A read on maker, era and origin, taken where you are standing, gives you a reason to set something aside for a closer look rather than deciding in a hurry.
Words for the things you cannot name
Searching for a brown jug gets you nowhere. Searching for a named pottery, a period and a country of origin gets you reference pages, auction records and collector threads that match what you are holding. Patina's job is largely to hand you those first few words.
Uncertainty stated out loud rather than buried
Every result arrives with a confidence level, so you can tell a clear read from a reasonable guess. If the model is not sure, we say so and point you toward the right next step, because a confident sentence about an object that deserves better is worse than no sentence at all.
An appraiser's time spent on the few pieces that need it
The triage flag exists so the question of whether to pay for expert attention gets asked object by object, rather than as one nervous decision about the entire estate.
Somewhere to look back at
Your last ten scans stay in your account, which covers a long afternoon of sorting and the argument you will inevitably have on Sunday about what the thing in the front bedroom actually was.
A cost you can see coming
Three identifications a month are free. If you are clearing a whole house, unlimited scanning is $6.99 a month, which is a smaller and far more predictable number than choosing between appraising everything and appraising nothing.
Where the evidence usually hides, and what a photo can suggest
| What you are holding | Where the mark usually is | What a photo can reasonably suggest |
|---|---|---|
| Ceramics and porcelain | The base or foot rim, sometimes under the glaze | A likely maker, era and origin, with the confidence level stated alongside |
| Silver and plated ware | Undersides, rims, handle joins, the back of a spoon | A likely maker, era and origin, and how sure the model is about it |
| Furniture | Inside drawers, the back of the carcass, the underside of a seat rail | A read on maker, era and origin, plus a triage flag when confidence is low |
| Glass | The base, around the pontil, occasionally an acid-etched mark | Maker, era and origin in plain English, and never a dollar value |
| Paintings and prints | Lower corners, the back of the frame, the stretcher | A likely maker and era, with a referral when confidence is below the threshold |
| Clocks and instruments | The dial, the movement, the back of the case | Maker, era and origin, with the confidence shown on the result screen |
| Textiles and rugs | A hem, a selvedge, a stitched label | A read on maker, era and origin, and an appraiser referral if the model is unsure |
Thirty objects, three free scans, and the arithmetic in between
Do the sums before the weekend starts, because the quota is real. The free plan gives three identifications per calendar month, counted on our side rather than in your browser. A house with thirty objects nobody can name is therefore ten months of free scanning, which is no use at all against a clearance date at the end of the month.
Trim the thirty down and it still does not fit. If half the flagged objects carry a mark worth photographing, you are at fifteen scans, five months of free quota. One helpful piece of arithmetic: a photograph Patina cannot read does not spend a scan. It comes back as a retake prompt with a short line telling you what to change, and those unreadable attempts are capped at ten a day, so glare on a hallmark costs you a second attempt rather than a third of your month.
The honest reading is that the free plan is there to let you see a real result before paying anything, and a deadline is what the unlimited plan is for.
What a weekend of sorting costs
Free
Free
The occasional finder or inheritance receiver who meets an unfamiliar object a few times a year and needs to see a real result before paying anything.
- Scans per month: 3
- Scan history: Last 10 scans
- Maker, era and origin from a photo
- Honest confidence level on every result
- Appraiser referral when a result needs an expert eye
- Scan history of your last 10 scans
Unlimited
$6.99 / month
The estate sale regular or serious thrift shopper who meets unfamiliar objects several times a month and wants to scan every one of them.
- Scans per month: Unlimited
- Scan history: Last 10 scans
- Dollar values: Not provided
- Unlimited scans every month
- Maker, era and origin from a photo
- Honest confidence level on every result
Questions
Will Patina tell me what my inherited antiques are worth?
No. Patina never produces a dollar value, in any form, and it is not built to. It is built to read maker, era and origin from a photo and say how confident it is. Valuation is appraiser work, and when a result is uncertain the screen flags it and offers a referral link to an independent appraisal service we have no partnership with.
How many objects can I scan if I am clearing a whole house?
The Free plan gives you three identifications per calendar month, counted on our side rather than in your browser. For a house, the Unlimited plan is $6.99 a month with no scan limit. Both plans include the confidence level on every result, the appraiser referral when a result is uncertain, and your last 10 scans. The unlimited plan is bought inside the Patina phone app through the App Store and Google Play, which is not in the stores yet.
Can I use photos I have already taken of the boxes?
Yes, capture is built for both ways of working on a phone: taking a photo with the device camera, or choosing a photo you already have. You can also type anything you already know into an optional note under the photo, such as a mark you can read yourself. There is more on how capture behaves in the room on the scan capture page.
What happens when the model is not sure what the object is?
Below a set confidence threshold the result carries an appraisal triage flag along with a referral link to an independent appraisal service, so the object has a next step rather than a shrug. You can also add a detail and check again from the result screen. Our page on confidence and limits goes into how to read a low-confidence result.
Do you keep the photos of my family's things?
Yes, while your account exists. Patina stores the photos you scan and the identification results for them so your scan history keeps working, along with your name, email address and password hash, and your subscription status with a billing customer reference. A photo we ask you to retake is not kept, only a daily count of retake prompts. Everything is hosted on Amazon Web Services in the United States, and scan photos are processed by an AI model from Anthropic. The page on photo storage and deletion sets this out in full, and the privacy policy at /privacy/ lists the services that process customer data at /subprocessors/.
How do I get my data out, or get the account deleted?
A signed-in customer can download a copy of their data and delete their account from Settings in the product: the account, its photos and its scan history go at once. If you cannot sign in, write from your account email to hello@kaleidoapps.com, which is also the address for reporting a security problem. Under UK GDPR, a request for a copy of a person's data or for its erasure is answered within one month, which is the law's rule rather than a promise of our own.
How do I sign in?
With an email address and a password. The account is what holds your scan history and your plan, so the scans you take in the hallway on Saturday are still there on Sunday.
Who makes Patina?
Patina is the product, and its site's terms at /terms/ and privacy policy at /privacy/ name the company that sells it and give its registered details. Email reaches us at hello@kaleidoapps.com.
Sources
- eBay community, Antiques board: identification requests
- eBay community: Need help with silver marks please
- Antique identifier apps compared: treat any app result as a starting point
- WorthPoint: how to spot value at estate sales
- The Pickers Map: best things to buy at estate sales
- Estate sale buying guide: photograph and research before buying
- Identifying worn or rubbed silver hallmarks
- JustAnswer: three antique pieces of furniture inherited