It depends on your preference and your situation. Selling your collection outright can be a great choice for liquidating an estate quickly and efficiently. It is simple and easy, and payment is made immediately. Outright purchase is often combined with a clean-out, where the purchase price also includes our service of leaving the house or apartment in broom swept condition for a fast turnaround of the real estate.

After reviewing your collection, we would be happy to offer our advice about the best option for you. We can offer both options — estimates with terms of sale as well as an outright purchase price — so that you can decide.

Yes, and it is helpful to understand the difference between an auction evaluation and a formal appraisal. Our auction experts provide free evaluations of objects or entire collections for the purpose of selling those items in one of our auctions. These evaluations inform our auction estimates, which give you a sense of what to expect when you put the items up for sale.

However, many clients need an independent evaluation of their objects for purposes other than selling, such as insurance, probate, equitable distribution for trusts and estates or in the case of a divorce. Our formal appraisals are USPAP compliant and come in the form of a legal document that will be accepted by the IRS, courts of law, and insurance companies. Appraisals are billed on an hourly basis and are not dependent upon selling through our auction galleries.

We get results. The overall experience we create benefits our consignors and buyers alike. Our experience and extensive expertise, our level of service and dedication, and our connections stretching back decades to the strongest collectors and buyers in the world allow us to achieve the highest prices in the market.

From the initial visit to view your items to the final payment after a successful auction, our experts and professional staff are dedicated to recognizing the value of your collection and presenting it to a tremendous number of diverse potential buyers. Although we provide many services, our efficient, technology-driven operation enables us to offer commission rates that are often much lower than our competitors.

We are highly and enthusiastically recommended — our consignors and our buyers are glad that they chose to work with us!

Compared to the largest auction houses in New York City like Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams, Phillips, and Doyle, we offer three distinct advantages:

1. We want to handle your entire estate. Usually, the majority of the items in estates fall below the minimum value requirement of these auction houses, so they end up turning a large portion over to third-party auctions, who are then not able to offer the same low commission rate or extensive services. We sell the whole estate, which makes everything easier for you. Keeping the valuable pieces together with the rest of the collection not only elevates the whole collection but also allows us to consider the full value of the estate when proposing the lowest possible commission.
2. We go beyond the small tried-and-true circle of known buyers to find new collectors worldwide. Utilizing social media and international auction bidding platforms, we reach an active audience of tens of millions of potential buyers. LiveAuctioneers is the go-to auction platform in over 170 countries and the leading platform in the United States. None of these competitors sell through Liveauctioneers. We are a top-rated seller on the platform with hundreds of positive reviews and over 10,000 clients specifically following Capsule and Litchfield. We are also on Invaluable, Bidsquare, and Artsy, which all have large pools of distinct clients.
3. With our New York City exhibitions, beautifully designed catalogs, social media outreach, and loyal clientele, we offer what these other New York auctioneers offer. But we also have the advantage of our spacious Litchfield gallery, where we can show items that are more appropriate to a New England collector base. And, we do it all for less than any of these auction houses.

Compared to regional auction houses throughout the country like Wright + Rago, Skinner, Hindman, Heritage, Brunk, Pook & Pook our location is unbeatable:

Located in the center of the international art world, the Chelsea Art District is the ideal place to sell important fine art. The top gallerists, collectors, and advisors have easy access to view items from the collections that we exhibit. Our NYC location makes it easy for us to handle estates and collections from New York City and the surrounding areas. Litchield’s sprawling 10,000 square foot galleries, in bucolic New England, make the perfect setting from which to reach sophisticated buyers looking to fill elegant homes with a mix of antiques, Twentieth-century design, and more.

Compared to local area, single-owner auction houses like Stair, Clarke, Nye & Company, Millea Bros., Roland, Westport, and Greenwich, our partnership offers more:

The curated sales, New York City gallery exhibitions, and the use of stylish design in our catalogs, website, and marketing are just a few of the critical aspects to our strategy for selling fine art and other significant items that these local auctioneers do not do.

Meanwhile, Litchfield has over 25 years of history, an expansive exhibition space and a wealthy, loyal clientele. We are ideally suited for selling substantial collections of antiques, twentieth-century design, outdoor sculpture, Asian arts, jewelry and so much more.

Compared to country auctions like Stateline or Applebrook or estate buyers like Showplace or Big Apple Antiques, we do a better job selling more valuable items:

For lower-end collections, a country auction or outright sale to an estate liquidator is often the best choice — however, expensive items often get lost in the mix. Capsule & Litchfield offer a better solution: our specialists will work with you to identify, spotlight, and beautifully present your best pieces to our sophisticated collectors to achieve significantly higher prices.

We make use of the latest technology combined with our tried-and-true traditional marketing tools. For every sale, we send out professionally designed, customized, and targeted notifications to our extensive client list. Our own websites, which are continuously updated, are a go-to source for bidders.

Most of our buyers, especially our young new crop of collectors, interact with us through digital media, so we also advertise our auctions on social media and numerous mega collector website aggregators like LiveAuctioneers and Invaluable.

For important items by famous artists — Jean-Michel Basquiat, for example — we produce feature stories and videos that reach a wide audience to help us attain record prices. With esoteric collections like Wedgwood, Mettlach Steins, or Patek Philippe gold pocket watches, we seek out collector’s groups and specialist dealers.

Of course, we still mail notifications to our older clientele, host gallery exhibitions, telephone specific buyers, produce printed catalogs, and advertise in collectors magazines. Our knowledge of our buyers’ interests and how to effectively reach them enables us to connect them with your items.

Yes, we provide references upon request. A lot of our clientele come from recommendations. Private clients, art galleries, museums, antique dealers, interior decorators, CPAs, and more have all had successful experiences selling with Capsule and Litchfield and enthusiastically refer us to their family, friends, and clients.

We have worked with the estates of many celebrities and prestigious collectors. We work with many of the top names in the estate services world like law firms Patterson Belknap in New York City and Cramer & Anderson in Connecticut, bank trusts like BNY Mellon, and all of the top appraisers from the Appraisers Association of America and the American Society of Appraisers.

What people are saying about working with us!

Honest people, very helpful, great items. I was concerned about bidding and pick-up because of the covid19 virus. My fears were unfounded. I had an appointment for pick up and my items were waiting for me inside the front door when I arrived. Plus, the items were exactly as described!
Ellen, CT

Amazing. Super nice owner, honest and helpful. 100 percent satisfied
Doug, NY

Great staff and amazing service. Would recommend this knowledgeable and professional auction to anyone. A +
Steven, NJ

We build a strategic publicity campaign, tell a compelling story, and attract thousands of non-traditional auction bidders to these sales. Our public relations staff works with major newspapers and magazines to generate buzz about the collection.

Some of our most fun and exciting auctions over the years have been the sale of property from collections and estates of celebrities. Fans of comedians, authors, actors, and musicians are always excited to see what their idols have collected and to have a chance to take home a souvenir of their icon.

It has been our privilege to offer at auction property from the estates of comedian Joan Rivers, Pulitzer Prize winning author Philip Roth, opera diva Anna Moffo, and photographer Horst. P. Horst. We have sold a wonderful variety of items from the collections of Diane Sawyer and Mike Nichols, Jo Sullivan Loesser and Frank Loesser, Martha Rogers and Dick Cavett, Susan Baransky, Bruce Willis, and Lynn Redgrave.