Photograph the object in daylight against a plain background, filling the frame, and include something for scale. Tap the shutter, or pick a photo you already have. The AI names the piece, places it in a period and style, suggests a maker or origin, estimates its age, reads the condition, says whether it looks period or reproduction, and gives an honest resale range.
This is the single biggest thing you can do for accuracy. Marks live where nobody looks: the base of a vase, the back of a plate, the underside of a drawer, the inside of a lid, the reverse of a frame. A second scan of the mark, joint or back will usually beat a beautiful photo of the front.
They are honest ballpark ranges for the object as photographed, at a realistic US venue — local auction, estate sale, eBay sold listings — not retail antique-shop or insurance figures. Most inherited furniture, silver-plate, pressed glass and mass-market porcelain genuinely sells for tens of dollars, and the app will tell you so rather than flatter the piece. Estimates are informational, not an appraisal. For probate, insurance or anything valuable, get a written appraisal from an accredited appraiser (ASA, ISA, AAA) or a specialist auction house.
Antiques are the most reproduced category there is, and good reproductions pass photo inspection. The app tells you which clue drove its call — saw marks, screw type, mould seams, the crispness of a backstamp, wear in the wrong places — and gives you a check you can run at home. Treat it as a strong hint, never as proof. Tiffany-style lamps, Depression glass, Roseville pottery, Meissen crossed swords and Federal-style furniture are among the most faked things on the American market.
Search it by what you can actually see — a shape, a word, a set of initials, a country — rather than by a maker you don't know yet. The British date-letter tables (London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Dublin, Chester) let you read a silver hallmark to the year. The whole library works offline.
Antiques are genuinely hard from one photo — form, surface and marks all matter, and the same shape was made for two centuries. Try the underside, a raking-light shot of the surface, and a close-up of any mark. When the AI isn't sure it says so; treat a low-confidence result as unidentified and use the marks library and the period almanac to narrow it down yourself.
You are responsible for following the rules where you buy and sell — particularly on protected materials such as ivory and tortoiseshell, on firearms and militaria, and on describing goods accurately when you list them. Never present an app estimate as a professional appraisal.
Subscriptions are billed by Apple and renew automatically. Manage or cancel in Settings → your name → Subscriptions, or use Restore in the app's About screen if you've already purchased on another device.
Anything else — bugs, feature ideas, a piece the AI got hilariously wrong: inkpocket.app@gmail.com