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Learn with Marc Allum

Collecting Antiques

Learn how to invest wisely in arts, antiques and collectables to build a well-balanced portfolio.

Course overview

Buying a new car can be stressful experience, so imagine that you are aiming to invest money for your future prosperity in an area in which you have little experience – such as art. It’s a daunting prospect. However, why not start from a position of greater security by making sure that the risks you take are significantly reduced. Humans have a propensity to prevaricate and their indecisiveness can be based on a number of factors. Lack of information and knowledge is perhaps foremost. The experience necessary to make good investment decisions is not easily attained – it can take a lifetime - but this lesson will help to provide you with an increased awareness of the variables at play, whilst bolstering your confidence and enabling you to make more intelligently informed, less hazardous decisions.

Meet Marc Allum

Marc Allum is an expert, writer and broadcaster. As a child he just loved collecting ‘stuff’, digging up bottles or buying old postcards. Fast-forward a few decades and he has now written and contributed to over sixteen books on antiques, art and collectables and regularly writes for numerous mainstream magazines. Marc has been a specialist on the BBC Antiques Roadshow since 1998 as well as many other television and radio programmes. Having spent over 16 years as a director of a major London auction house, he is an expert valuer, auctioneer and consultant with a passion and reputation for divining the unusual. Profile picture from James Bignell Photography.

Course description

Antiques specialist and regular presenter on BBC Antiques Roadshow, Marc Allum teaches you how to collect and invest in antiques.

On this antiques course Marc will share his secrets on how to evaluate collectables, art and antiques and work out what you think is ‘the next big thing’.

Whether you're an amateur collector or professional antiques investor, this course will teach you what criteria to look for for an antiques and art investment portfolio, and inspire you to buy wisely.

Marc will look at how a diverse and interesting portfolio of art and antiques can behave rather like a well-balanced stock market portfolio. He'll show you how to plan around emerging markets, ‘getting in on the ground floor’ with new fields in collecting, following fashion and trends and how to avoid the pitfalls and invest long term.

You'll learn how to use supply and demand across markets including antique furniture and works of art, as well as understanding how to source art and antiques from markets and auction houses.

You'll learn
  • The philosophy of value and understanding art and antiques for investment
  • Practical market tips for buying in different situations.
  • Identifying the disparities between value and worth, who charges what and where best to spend your time searching for good investments.
  • Analysing the frailties and strengths of the market; the pros and cons of riding fashion and collecting fads, and profiting from economic peaks and troughs.
  • Anniversary investment planning.
  • How to spread your portfolio across a number of mediums to ensure safety in the long term and good overall returns - whatever the market conditions.
  • The psychology and nature of becoming a collector/investor rather than a dispassionate accumulator.
  • The analysis of art and antiques from an expert’s perspective and the concept of divining objects for their esoteric worth based on historical information, provenance, beauty and craftsmanship. (Not forgetting that some objects are not at all beautiful but are valuable too).
Time to complete collecting and investing in antiques course:

Every student is different but in general we think the whole course will take around 5 hours 45 mins to complete including:

  • Video lessons: 45 minutes
  • Assignments: at least 2 hours per lesson
  • Interactive classroom time: 15 minutes per lesson
  • Tutor feedback review (Expert level): 15 minutes per lesson
You'll need:

You don't need any special equipment, but you will be planning your own antiques and collectables portfolio and investment strategy.

The course is suitable for all levels - collectors to antiques professionals who want to learn from an antiques investment specialist.

The course includes:
  • 2 on-demand video lessons - presented by Marc Allum
  • lifetime access to the videos, notes and interactive class
  • flexible classes - join and learn when and where you like
  • downloadable lesson notes
  • practical (optional) antiques portfolio project
  • access on your mobile, PC, Mac or laptop
  • small interactive online classroom chat online to students from around the world
Ready to get started?

Just add the course to your basket above - choose the 'Expert' option for personal feedback from Marc on your collecting strategy and questions.

Any questions? Contact us by clicking on the orange speech symbol - we'd love to hear from you.