Amati Affordable any good?

[san_d]

Hello everyone,

I am a new member of this forum, so forgive me if I seem a little unknowledgeable.  I came across this Auction series called Amati Affordable a few months ago where the Amati Auction house was bidding instruments, certainly very unique and old ones, from the starting price of 10 pounds. Seeing that for a long time, my dream has been to own a baroque-era violin (just for collection's sake, I have an awesome violin already), yet disheartened by just how expensive these instruments tended to get, I thought this to be a great opportunity. 

I just want to know if anyone here knows anything about whether that auction house can be trusted, or whether any of the instruments in the current Amati Affordable auction are indeed baroque, or just convincing German copies.

Thanks.

[jamesbuchanan]

I feel like I should reply here, but you will forgive me for keeping it brief as it is a bit like me marking my own homework. I help run the auctions at Amati.

The AA sales were designed from the outset as a way of helping people clear the decks with instruments that they just want to be sold. At the time there weren't many clear opportunities to sell instruments at this price point so we stepped in.

Our principle with these sales is that, given the low value usually of the instruments, we only want to try to sell these once. For this reason we insist on no reserves, the market then deciding how much the instruments are worth.

Sometimes the market corrects us quite violently and instruments make far more than we had expected. Usually they make in the region of hundreds of pounds.

Our attributions are minimal - 'a violin' etc. - although we provide the same number of photographs and condition reports as in our specialist sales.

Are we trustworthy? There are two different types of trust going on here. One of knowledge and ethics. The first is easy on our AA sales as we are only presenting the bare facts. The latter would be silly for me to answer. I think the fact that we are on our 110th auction and still going strong is perhaps an indicator.

Hope that helps. If you want to email me directly I am happy to fill in any gaps. I am not in the office today, so won't be much practical use however!

[matesic]

I've bought and sold instruments via Amati.com and find their service to be completely commendable. As for ID I don't think anyone here will do the appraising for you. Experience is the only way.

[Shelbow]

29 minutes ago, matesic said:

I've bought and sold instruments via Amati.com and find their service to be completely commendable. As for ID I don't think anyone here will do the appraising for you. Experience is the only way.

+1

[martin swan]

19 hours ago, san_d said:

Hello everyone,

I am a new member of this forum, so forgive me if I seem a little unknowledgeable.  I came across this Auction series called Amati Affordable a few months ago where the Amati Auction house was bidding instruments, certainly very unique and old ones, from the starting price of 10 pounds. Seeing that for a long time, my dream has been to own a baroque-era violin (just for collection's sake, I have an awesome violin already), yet disheartened by just how expensive these instruments tended to get, I thought this to be a great opportunity. 

I just want to know if anyone here knows anything about whether that auction house can be trusted, or whether any of the instruments in the current Amati Affordable auction are indeed baroque, or just convincing German copies.

Thanks.

How would you define a baroque violin?

Re Amati, James can have a reference from me any day, but Amati Affordable is a speculative auction, so the question of trust is irrelevant.