Engraved county maps, hand-coloured botanical plates, steel engravings, sporting prints, and 19th-century lithographs. Every piece assessed for publisher, engraver, period, hand-colouring quality, condition, and current collector demand — not lumped together as a job lot.
Most clearance buyers price prints and maps by the inch of frame. We price them by what they actually are. Free insured postage. Written valuation per piece. Paid in 72 hours.
Antique maps and prints span many categories, techniques, and periods — each with its own hierarchy of publishers, subjects, and collecting demand. We consider the following categories, assessing each piece individually for attribution, condition, and current market.
English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish county maps from the 16th through 19th centuries. The most sought-after are by Saxton (1570s), Speed (1611–1627), Blaeu, Jansson, Ogilby, Morden, Bowen, Kitchin, and Cary. We assess for publisher, edition, state, hand-colouring quality, margins, and condition. A fine early Speed county with original colour and generous margins is among the most collected items in English cartography.
16th and 17th-century world maps and regional maps from the great Dutch atlas publishers — Ortelius, Blaeu, Janssonius, Hondius, Mercator, and De Wit — are keenly collected internationally. Later 18th-century French and English maps of the Americas, Africa, and Asia are also in demand, particularly decorated examples with cartouches, sea monsters, and figural borders.
Hand-coloured botanical engravings and aquatints from Curtis's Botanical Magazine, the Botanical Register, Redouté's Les Roses, and comparable publications. Ornithological plates from Gould, Morris, and Audubon. Entomological and zoological plates from natural history atlases. Condition, colouring quality, and publisher attribution drive value significantly.
Hand-coloured aquatint sporting prints by Henry Alken Sr., James Pollard, and their contemporaries — hunting, racing, coaching scenes. Morland and Stubbs engravings. Later steel engravings and chromolithographs of sporting subjects from Victorian publishers. Matched sets retain a premium over individual plates pulled from sets.
Steel and copperplate engravings of country houses, cathedrals, town views, and landscape scenery from 18th and 19th-century publications. Plates from Kip and Knyff's Britannia Illustrata, Buck's Antiquities, Britton and Brayley, and comparable works. Views of specific counties or estates can attract local interest as well as collector demand.
Hand-coloured fashion plates from Ackermann's Repository, the Gallery of Fashion, and Le Beau Monde from the Regency and early Victorian periods. Decorative stipple engravings and mezzotints after Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney. Coloured theatrical and musical subjects. Decorative demand for framing competes with collector demand in these categories.
The most important factor in valuing a map or print is accurate attribution — establishing who published it, when, and in which edition or state. Many maps were published across multiple editions spanning decades, and early states often differ from later ones in significant ways: additional place names, altered cartouches, corrections to coastlines, or changes of publisher imprint. Early states from the most significant editions consistently command the highest prices.
For English county maps, we refer to standard bibliographic references to establish publisher, plate state, and edition. For natural history prints, we check plate numbers, publication date lines, and publisher imprints against the source publications. This bibliographic work — which most buyers do not perform — is what allows us to value a piece accurately and to explain clearly in our written offer what makes it more or less desirable.
Condition matters, but context is everything. A small tear in the margin of a rare 16th-century world map matters far less than the same defect on a readily available Victorian county view. We assess condition in proportion to rarity and importance, not as an absolute standard applied uniformly across all categories.
The distinction between original period hand-colouring applied near the date of printing and later amateur or commercial colouring matters to serious collectors. Period colouring shows characteristic tonal qualities, uses pigments appropriate to the date, and is typically found on the face of the paper rather than re-worked over engraved lines. Under raking light, a skilled colourist's brushwork from the period has a different character to later additions.
We assess hand-colouring as part of every valuation, noting whether it appears to be contemporary with printing, and whether it adds or detracts from value in the context of the specific piece and its collecting category. We include this assessment in our written offer — you will know exactly what we found.
Full-frame shots of the front and back, close-ups of any title cartouche, date line, or imprint, and detail shots of hand-colouring where present. Natural light, no flash. You can email these before sending anything.
We send a free prepaid, tracked, and insured shipping label. Your parcel is insured to £5,000 from the moment the courier scans it — including all contents.
Your parcel is opened publicly on YouTube before any specialist handles it. Every piece is recorded in the condition received — complete transparency from arrival to offer.
Publisher identified, edition noted, colouring assessed, condition graded. Written offer per item. Accept what you choose; we return the rest free of charge. Payment within 72 hours or +3%.
Call us on 01234 815116 or email support@fairvintage.co.uk. We respond within one working day.
Get your free pack →Genuine antique maps and prints are typically on laid paper (visible as fine parallel lines held to light) rather than wove paper. Copperplate engravings leave a plate mark — an indented rectangle in the paper from the press. Many reproductions are printed on artificially aged paper and lack these characteristics. Send us clear photographs and we will advise before you post anything.
Generally yes — but quality, age, and type of colouring matters. Original period hand-colouring applied near the time of printing by a trained colourist is most desirable. Later amateur colouring can reduce value if it obscures engraved detail. We assess hand-colouring as part of every valuation and note our findings in the written offer.
Please do not remove maps or prints from frames before contacting us. Old framing can conceal additional margin or damage. We can advise from photographs whether removal is worthwhile. If the framing itself is antique, it may have independent value worth preserving.
For English county maps: Saxton (1570s), Speed (1611–1627), Blaeu, Bowen, and Cary. For world maps: Ortelius, Blaeu, Janssonius, and Mercator. For botanicals: Ehret, Redouté, and Curtis's Botanical Magazine. Identifying the publisher and edition is essential — we do this as part of every assessment.
Both. Individual significant pieces are assessed on their own merits. Collections from a single source — a dismembered atlas, a complete natural history series — are equally welcome. We assess each piece individually and make written offers per item, so you can choose to sell all or select pieces.
Within 72 hours of your parcel going live on YouTube — guaranteed. If we miss that window, we add 3% to your total, written into the agreement before you send anything.
Request your free pack today. Every piece assessed individually — publisher identified, colouring assessed, condition graded. Opened live on YouTube. Paid within 72 hours.