Don't Sell It Yet!

What Gets Thrown Away

In 1989 a man paid $4 at a Pennsylvania flea market for a torn painting, because he liked the frame. Folded flat behind the canvas was a first printing of the Declaration of Independence. Sotheby's sold it in June 1991 for $2.42 million.

A bowl bought for $3 at a yard sale fetched $2.2 million at Sotheby's in 2013. A comic book found inside the wall of a Minnesota house during a renovation fetched $175,000 the same year. The tobacco tin on the cover of this Guide came out of a wall as well, during a bathroom renovation, and fetched $47,000 at auction in 2025.

Nobody involved knew what they were holding until somebody looked properly. Every neighbour, every relative, every clearance van before them had walked straight past. One British study put the unused items sitting in the country's homes at up to £48 billion, with the average house holding several thousand pounds in jewellery and old furniture alone. Another put the homeware going to landfill at £2.2 billion a year.

That is the money being left on the table. It is not in bank vaults. It is in lofts, sideboards, button tins, record boxes and the carton of tapes by the door marked for the tip.

Most old things fetch very little. A few fetch a fortune. The difference is usually one date, one mark, one label, or one detail almost everyone misses. And you only get one go at it, because you cannot unsell a thing.

The people who cashed those cheques were not luckier than you. At the deciding moment, they simply knew what to look for. That knowledge fits in one book.

Introducing: Ashbys' Household & Collectibles Price Guide

2027 Edition

240+ household items you might actually own, and what each one fetched at auction, with the sale and the date printed next to every figure. So before anything leaves your house, you know what to look for, what to keep, what to sell, and what can honestly go to the tip.

Every entry runs the same shape: what it is, the marks that confirm it, what the reproduction looks like next to the real thing, and the results. Each section starts with the everyday version and ends with the record holder, so you can see exactly where your one sits on the ladder.

And because more of you ask this than anything else: a special section on where and how to sell in 2027. Auction, dealer, fair, online. Which route suits which object, what each one costs you, and the order to do things in.

What's Inside The Guide

240+ entries. 300+ color photographs. 500 marks, hallmarks and backstamps photographed and decoded. Including:

• The Ten Mistakes that destroy value before a price is ever discussed. Weigh nothing. Split nothing. Clean nothing. · p. 9
• Your cassettes and VHS tapes: which ones people genuinely pay money for, which are landfill, and how to tell in ten seconds. A demo cassette fetched $5,000 in 2024. · p. 21
• The records. The pressing, the label and the small print in the run-out groove decide everything. One copy of an album millions of households own fetched $790,000 at Julien's in 2015, and the entry shows exactly why that copy and where yours sits · p. 33
• Old tins. The one that came out of a wall during a bathroom renovation and fetched $47,000 at Miller & Miller in 2025, and the marks that separate it from the ones fetching $5 · p. 48
• The single letter under a spoon that separates $12 from $1,200, and how to read it in four seconds · p. 55
• The polish that takes a fortune off a piece of silver in under a minute. It's in most kitchen cupboards. · p. 59
• The backstamp clock: how the mark on the bottom of a plate dates it to within a decade, on every major maker · p. 68
• Old cameras. The names on the lens ring that have paid for cars, found at boot sales for the price of a sandwich · p. 84
• The jewelry box: what to never, ever send to the scrap-gold shop, no matter what they offer by weight · p. 96
• The case-back rule for old wristwatches: what to check before anyone opens it, and why opening it wrong costs money · p. 107
• Glass Christmas ornaments and lights, the prewar ones, and how to tell them from the reproductions sold every December · p. 118
• Stamps, letters and family papers: what a shoebox of correspondence can hold, and the rule before anything is thrown out · p. 129
• The factory-error toys: when a production-line mistake turns pocket money into real money, and the errors collectors actually chase · p. 138
• Real against reproduction, photographed side by side, on the twenty items most often faked · p. 146
• The house clearance and probate chapter, in plain speech: what to do first, what the figure is for, and where families lose the most · p. 160
• The special section: where and how to sell in 2027. Auction, dealer, fair, online. Who buys, what they pay, and which route suits which object · p. 171

And that's a fraction of it. 240+ entries, each with a real result attached, plus the tear-out charter and checklist made to be printed and pinned up.

Where The Figures Come From

Every value in this Guide is an item that actually sold: what it was, where it sold, and when. The sale and the date sit beside the number, so you can look it up yourself. You should.

Take the three on the cover. The tobacco tin that came out of a wall: Miller & Miller Auctions, Ontario, May 2025. The demo cassette: sold May 2024. The record: Julien's Auctions, December 2015, and it holds the Guinness record. Type any of them into a search engine tonight and check me.

Not what a dealer told somebody it might be worth one day. Not an estimate. A result. That is the only honest way to price anything, and it's how the trade itself has always worked.

Prices move, which is why this is the 2027 Edition, and why every future edition comes to you free. You own each year's corrections and new results, for as long as the Guide is published.

Seven Days to Decide

"I am glad that you did not retire from your knowledge and enthusiasm and that you found a way to share both with us." A viewer comment on the Malcolm Ashby channel

Meet Malcolm Ashby

On my channel I show people one thing: how to look at an ordinary object properly before it leaves the house. Turn it over. Find the mark. Check what the same thing fetched at auction, and read the sale and the date for yourself.

That is also everything you need to know about me, because this Guide asks you to take nobody's word for anything, including mine. Every figure in it is a real auction result with the source printed beside it. The authority here is the record, not the man holding the bowl.

What I will say plainly: I have no shop, no commission, and nothing to buy from you. The commonest thing people write to me is that they cannot find anyone near them to give an honest opinion. This Guide is built to be that opinion, in your own kitchen, for every ordinary thing a house holds.

Common Questions

Is this a printed book?

It is a PDF you download the moment you buy. Read it on a phone, a tablet or a computer, or print any page at home. The charter and checklist are made to be printed.

How does it arrive?

Gumroad emails you the download link within a minute of purchase, along with your receipt.

What if I want my money back?

Reply to that receipt email within 7 days and every dollar comes back. No forms, no questions asked.

Do future editions cost extra?

No. Buy the 2027 Edition once and every future edition is sent to you free, for as long as the Guide is published.

Have a proper look first.

The clearance van, the scrap merchant, the dealer who lets you believe it's worthless. All of them know one thing you don't. 240+ entries, each with the result printed beside it, waiting in your inbox.

P.S. The $37 launch price ends Sunday night, and the 2027 Edition then sells at $77. The tin on the cover sat inside a wall for a century because nobody looked. Go and have a proper look in that loft. You never know.