cert with fiddle sale?

[TedN]

Does anyone here provide a certificate of authenticity with a fiddle sale? When you buy a Rolex, you get a box and papers that prove authenticity and provenance. Is it a good practice to provide this with a fiddle? If you do provide this, how does that work if you sell through a dealer? You just send the deal the cert, and they provide it to the customer? Would dealers have a reason to frown upon this practice?

[PhilipKT]

I got a certificate with my cello when I bought it. I’m not sure where it is… But yes, I got one, and I didn’t have to ask for it.

[duane88]

You should get something like this from a maker if purchasing a new instrument.

Not all instruments warrant a certificate, certificates are not all equal, and, of course, although we always want a name and a date, and the pressure to come up with names is significant, we can't always provide that information.

[TedN]

Did you receive a certificate from the dealer or from the actual maker?

Duane, are you speaking to certs from a dealer or an authenticating service?

[The Violin Beautiful]

Unless the expert who certified the violin is one of the top few in the world, be very careful about trusting a dealer’s certificate. If it’s a certificate from a living maker, that’s a different matter. There are a lot of unscrupulous “experts” out there who will certify things they know are fake to trick people into buying. 

An insurance appraisal is something the dealer or shop should be able to provide and is separate from the certificate.

It’s not always a bad thing to buy a violin that doesn’t have a certificate, but the price should reflect that or it should be an item that is unmistakable, like a Hill bow. There’s more risk without expert documentation in the mid to high end of the market, but it’s up to you as a buyer to weigh the risks. 

[nathan slobodkin]

1 hour ago, The Violin Beautiful said:

Unless the expert who certified the violin is one of the top few in the world, be very careful about trusting a dealer’s certificate. If it’s a certificate from a living maker, that’s a different matter. There are a lot of unscrupulous “experts” out there who will certify things they know are fake to trick people into buying. 

An insurance appraisal is something the dealer or shop should be able to provide and is separate from the certificate.

It’s not always a bad thing to buy a violin that doesn’t have a certificate, but the price should reflect that or it should be an item that is unmistakable, like a Hill bow. There’s more risk without expert documentation in the mid to high end of the market, but it’s up to you as a buyer to weigh the risks. 

There are a lot of fake Hill bows around now. Not hard for experts to tell the difference but very dangerous for the general public. 

[The Violin Beautiful]

2 hours ago, nathan slobodkin said:

There are a lot of fake Hill bows around now. Not hard for experts to tell the difference but very dangerous for the general public. 

Perhaps it wasn’t as good an example as I thought, but I think the point still stands. I’ve only seen a couple of the fakes around here, but they were almost comical. I didn’t realize they were as numerous as you suggest. 

[duane88]

4 hours ago, TedN said:

Did you receive a certificate from the dealer or from the actual maker?

Duane, are you speaking to certs from a dealer or an authenticating service?

"Authenticating service". 

I think that we call those Dealers. 

The independent experts who aren't Dealers are few.

[TedN]

OK, I see what you're saying.

I'm more interested in certificates from living makers. I am a violin maker, and I was thinking about providing a certificate of authenticity when I sell my instrument. Is that a common practice? I was thinking along the lines of purchasing a new Rolex watch. With the watch, you receive a certificate of authenticity, or some sort of paper work that the owner generally retains to verify that the watch is authentic and it was purchased on a certain date, and other people who have purchased the same model Rolex watch will have the same paper work. It goes along way providing the paper work along with the watch if you want to sell the watch in the future. If you have the paper work with the watch it also makes the watch more valuable, and in some cases people with original paperwork can sell the watch for double the price. It lends credence that the watch is not a fake.

[Julian Cossmann Cooke]

4 hours ago, TedN said:

OK, I see what you're saying.

I'm more interested in certificates from living makers. I am a violin maker, and I was thinking about providing a certificate of authenticity when I sell my instrument. Is that a common practice? I was thinking along the lines of purchasing a new Rolex watch. With the watch, you receive a certificate of authenticity, or some sort of paper work that the owner generally retains to verify that the watch is authentic and it was purchased on a certain date, and other people who have purchased the same model Rolex watch will have the same paper work. It goes along way providing the paper work along with the watch if you want to sell the watch in the future. If you have the paper work with the watch it also makes the watch more valuable, and in some cases people with original paperwork can sell the watch for double the price. It lends credence that the watch is not a fake.

I provide a certificate of authenticity with each of my instruments that I sell.  Whether or not it's consigned to a shop, the instrument comes with the certificate which I provide directly to the buyer.

[Don Noon]

There was a thread on this exact topic a couple of years ago:

 

[The Violin Beautiful]

I think it’s a good idea to provide your customers with certificates if you’re a new maker. It’s helpful for them if they want to insure and it makes it easier to tell if it’s been altered down the road.