Antique-Selling Tips

Dec. 5 -- — It's the packrat's version of the American Dream: finding something in your attic that turns out to be a treasure.

It's also a mania that's being fueled by public television's wildly successful Antiques Roadshow. In city after city, mobs of people line up with their heirlooms, hoping the Roadshow appraisers will declare their little knickknacks to be valuable treasures.

It all looks so friendly and honest that it makes you want to clean out your closet. But in a three-month hidden-camera investigation, ABCNEWS discovered that the real world of antiques can be cutthroat, leaving you with only a fraction of what your treasure is worth.

'The Antiques Business Is a Business'

For example, an ABCNEWS investigator took an art deco silver Tiffany tray to a Manhattan dealer who paid $45 for it, saying it would retail for $75. The next day the dealer sold the tray to an undercover buyer from ABCNEWS for $695.

In Hudson, N.Y., where fine antique stores line the streets, three Staffordshire plates were sold to a dealer for $75, and then sold back to an undercover ABCNEWS investigator for $890.

Although ABCNEWS did find some dealers who offered fair estimates of the worth of our antiques, the results of the investigation were startling.

According to antiques writer Bob Jackman, when people go to an antiques dealer , they should be "as suspicious as they are when they go into a real estate agent or when they go into a car dealership."

Helaine Fendelman, former president of the Appraisers Association of America, agrees. "The antiques business is a business. It's buyer beware, caveat emptor — it absolutely always has been," she says.

Some Tips From the Experts:

Here are some tops for selling your antiques and other valuables:

Hire an appraiser. "You cannot afford not to have your item appraised," says Fendelman. Though appraisers' fees range from $75 to $350 an hour, she says, hiring one will still be worth your while.