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Why Your Deduction May Not Be What You Anticipate | Many donors assume that if they paid a certain amount for an item, or believe it has appreciated over time, the charitable deduction will naturally reflect that value. Unfortunately, the reality is often far more complex.

The great 20th century jewelry makers such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Tiffany are among the top in the field for good reason. Their history, craftsmanship and status in the canon is secure. They are rightfully among the most sought after pieces in the collector market. And their prices reflect this demand, leaving less opportunity for collectors. The sophisticated buyer, at this point, begins to look elsewhere.

Markets are not neutral. They are made of people who carry their histories, aesthetic allegiances, and cultural memories into the auction room. A colonial-era needlepoint sampler made in Pennsylvania carries the particular domestic life of the mid-Atlantic and one that resonates most with buyers whose own sense of the past shares those environs.

This is the quality that the auction market has been pricing, with increasing conviction, for the last several years. It is what sophisticated collectors have understood for as long as they have been collecting. It is not sentiment or nostalgia. It is something closer to what historians mean when they talk about primary sources: the irreplaceable authority of the thing that was actually there.