A real antiques road show show

Erik Kafrissen is taking his online business and his family on the road for four months to drive home a point about his new e-venture

Douglas Quan
The Ottawa Citizen

Last Thursday, E-com entrepreneur Erik Kafrissen pulled out of his Lanark County home in a colossal 36-foot RV with the dream of one day driving into the annals of digital superhighway stardom. With his wife and four children in tow, Kafrissen has embarked on a four-month marketing and networking blitz across the United States to promote his new, online appraisal service, www.WhatsItWorthToYou.com.

For a modest fee of $9.95 U.S., collectors of everything from baseball cards to coins to silverware can send in information and pictures of an item to the site and have it appraised by an expert.

Kafrissen, himself an avid collector and dealer of rare coins and paper money, says he thinks his online service has the potential to grow into something huge. In fact, he hopes that he'll be able to sign on the eBay online auction house and the wildly popular Antiques Roadshow television series as affiliates.

"For me, this is the big one," said Kafrissen, his arms stretched out in front of him. "We want to become the source for online valuation."

In the last few months, the site has helped hundreds of people around the world discover that items lying around the house collecting dust were actually worth something.

One client learned that a German coin she had picked up at a garage sale was actually worth $1,700 to $2,000 U.S. Another client discovered that the vintage Barbie she'd owned since she was a child was worth $5,000 to $6,000 U.S. To date, the most expensive item that's been appraised is a rare 1851 Canadian three-pence stamp worth an estimated $11,000 U.S.

"A lot of people call us and say, 'Are you sure it's worth that much?' They can't believe it," said Kafrissen.

Kafrissen says one of the more bizarre items submitted to his site was a chastity belt from the Middle Ages. It ended up being donated to charity. Other unique items have included: a 1953 yearbook from L.C. Humes High School in Memphis, Tennessee, signed by Elvis Presley during his senior year ($7,500 to $10,000); a Chicago Daily Tribune newspaper with the incorrect headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" ($1,000 to $1,500); and a baseball signed by Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth ($6,500 to $8,000).

Kafrissen says his service is also valuable for people who may want a "second opinion" about the worth of an item being sold on an online auction before they buy it.

"You go to eBay and you're basically relying on the seller to give you information. And if you're not an expert in the thing you want to buy, then you really don't know if it's worth it," he said.

To drive home the point that he means business, Kafrissen turned the motorhome he bought for the trip into a billboard on wheels. The RV is emblazoned with splashy WhatsItWorthToYou insignia and cartoon sketches that make it seem like a life-size colouring book.

Kafrissen, his wife Clare, 37, and their children Kai, 7, Sile, 5, Bridget, 4, and Isaiah, 2, will be visiting auction houses, collectors' shows, dealers and appraisers across the United States. The reason why they're spending the majority of their time south of the border is because that's where the demand is, says Kafrissen. Only about five per cent of his clients are Canadian.

"The U.S. is collector crazy. They collect anything and everything under the sun. You walk into the grocery store, and you have coin collecting books for sale. With the whole advent of eBay, the collectors marketplace has gone crazy. Canadians just don't collect as much."

His site is averaging 2,000 hits and 10 appraisals a day. Kafrissen said he's already had to order a complete overhaul of the Web site because of the amount of traffic it's been getting.

"We haven't even shaved off the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the potential is for online services," said Michael Findlay, a money dealer in Angus, Ont. who is also one of 92 experts appraising items for Kafrissen. "There's no room but to grow."

Findlay says online appraisal sites are attractive because they offer convenience. "Yes, you can look it up in the library, but it can be tedious. Here, you can put a coin on a scanner bed, and with a few clicks of a mouse, you've got this whole wealth of information."

Interestingly, seven out of every 10 clients are women. Kafrissen speculates this is because many women feel intimidated approaching male hobbyists face-to-face and are uncertain whether they're getting a completely truthful appraisal. "It's like when a woman goes to a garage to get her car fixed. She doesn't necessarily know if the garage mechanic is lying or telling her the truth."

Once a user is logged on to the main Web site, they are asked to submit as detailed a description as possible of their item. Obviously, it helps if you are able to send a picture of the item. Users are then taken through a tutorial that teaches them how to grade their item (eg. they are taught how to recognize an item that is in "mint" condition).

The information is then sent to the appropriate expert. All appraisers must submit three references and must have been in the market for at least 10 years. They also must adhere to an ethical code of conduct as set out by the Association of Online Appraisers.

When the appraisal is completed, usually within 72 hours, the client receives a detailed description of the item, plus two values: a "current fair market value" and a "replacement value."

The former is the amount you'd receive if you sold the item to a dealer or at an auction. The latter is the amount that one could expect to pay for that item from a dealer, and the amount a person might to want to insure that item for.

The appraiser receives half the cost of the service, and the company receives the other half. But the transaction doesn't have to end there. Clients can choose to be directed to other individuals or sites where they can sell their item, buy a similar item, trade that item, or have that item insured.

"What this is is using the Internet to its best potential, which is sharing information," said Kafrissen. "That's the beauty of the Web site, it allows people with information to marry up with people who want information."

Kafrissen stresses, however, that by no means is he suggesting that an online appraisal can take the place of a hands-on inspection. "Definitely not," he says. "There's no way we guarantee genuineness or authenticity. But it is giving them an idea. It's giving them another option."

In the Kafrissen home, a two-storey log house overlooking the Mississippi River in the picturesque hamlet of Sheridan Rapids in Lanark County, a series of framed one-dollar and two-dollar Canadian bills hang slightly awry by the dinner table.

In a home where havoc seems to rule the day -- the Kafrissens' four young children are all schooled at home -- it's amazing that Kafrissen can find the time, space and quiet required of a scrupulous numismatist.

But it is exactly Kafrissen's love for rare coins and paper money that eventually led to the creation of www.WhatsItWorthTo

You.com. A few years ago, he launched www.perthmoney.com, an online site where numismatists can buy and sell coins and paper money. He was deluged with requests from collectors interested in knowing what their money was actually worth. So he decided to add an appraisal section to this site, and charged $5 U.S. for each appraisal.

It was during a drive back from a paper money show in Memphis that the idea hit Kafrissen to call up his friends, who were appraisers in other areas, to see if they would be interested in launching a full-fledged appraisal service.

"I was so excited. I woke Clare up at 3 a.m. in the morning, and said, 'Honey, Honey, you've got to listen to this idea!'"

Kafrissen had no difficulty finding the venture capital to support the project since he had earned a solid reputation for business development. When he was 19, he started a catering business out of Toronto. After running that successfully for several years, he turned his money-collecting hobby into a business and became a dealer. At the same time, he built Fiddleheads Bar & Grill restaurant and banquet hall in Perth with three other partners.

"The ability to attract investors is a fair bit easier when you have a track record that's positive," he said. "Luckily we're not one of these dot-coms that has to go out and get $2 million in venture capital and waste it all away."

The business was formally incorporated in July of last year, with Kafrissen at its helm, and R.J. Ferguson serving as the company's vice-president of operations.

Right now, Kafrissen's main competition is www.eppraisals.com. The site was launched about half a year before Kafrissen's and has 800 experts on board. It charges $20 U.S. for an appraisal. Other online appraisal services are more geared towards specific areas, like fine china, stamps or cars, and can cost considerably more.

According to Judy Heim, the co-author of Free Stuff for Collectors on the Net, the key to the success of Kafrissen's Web site will be in getting the best appraisers.

"If you'll notice, what makes Antiques Roadshow so much fun to watch is that the appraisers are so knowledgeable and entertaining in the way they share their knowledge. The sites with the knowledgeable, entertaining appraisers are the ones that attract high traffic."

"I think targeting the right partners and customers is the hardest part," said Rob Liflander, author of The Everything Online Business Book. Liflander added that e-businesses have been "losing favour" in the last year.

"Consumers have done mostly looking on the Internet, but not buying. That is, consumers use the Internet to do research and price comparison. That's helpful for consumers, but they're essentially using information from the Web sites for free. Kafrissen will have to make it worth consumers' time and money by offering reputable services at less expensive prices."

Kafrissen acknowledges that he still has a long road to travel. However, it wasn't that long ago, he says, that people were doubting eBay would ever get off the ground.

"When eBay first came out, all the dealers were saying, 'Nobody's going to come out, you can't see the item, you have to be there, feel it, touch it.' Well, guess what, now those people are trying their hardest to get on eBay because it's become the medium to sell items."

Thanks to eBay, online auctioning is a $6.5 billion industry, and accounts for 20 per cent of all sales over the Internet, said Kafrissen.

"I think we can do the same."