Of what monetary value is my photographic collection?

Your collection will hold value to you beyond its price. If you are looking for the monetary value a good place to start is an auction house, which will have a number of general valuation days per week which are mostly free to attend. If you believe the photographs in your photographic collection may be of high value you could contact a national auction house. The photographs specialist at Christies, Jude Hull, is happy to give desk-top valuations (i.e. images over email) in the first instance; you can contact her here. Other large auction houses with dedicated photography departments or photography specialists include Sothebys, Phillips, Dreweatts Bloomsbury, Bonhams and Forum Auctions.

Auction houses often have searchable databases of previous sales. For a one-off charge or a subscription fee, websites like art sales index and artnet.com will let you search thousands of auction catalogue entries in one go to establish the provenance of a single work and its previous sale price. For acquisitions or sales from within a museum please read the advice from the Collections Trust here and consult the Museums Association’s Code of Ethics and Guidelines on Disposal.

A disorganised, poorly-kept collection is often of considerably less financial value than the opposite. Any time that you can put in on identifying, organising and telling people about your collection is definitely time well spent.