Most people wouldn’t think to bring AI-powered technology to antique stores or estate sales. But then, the co-founders of Raleigh-based Valuable aren’t most people.
The idea for this startup was sparked when one of those co-founders, John Wolpert, noticed that his wife, who is in the estate sale business, was spending hours inventorying a house for a sale. He knew there had to be a better way, and started to develop Valuable: an AI software that scans objects through a phone camera and provides a detailed description and estimated valuation.
“It’s kind of like an antique roadshow in your pocket,” Wolpert said.
Wolpert had worked as a technical product executive at IBM on and off since the 1980s, but his idea of retirement involved a lot more coding than golfing. He developed a prototype for Valuable in 2024 and met Bill Goodwin—an executive recruiter and hobbyist collector—who decided to fund and principally found the project, alongside John, Amy Wolpert, John Boezeman and Magdalyn Duffie.
Valuable is available to download as an app for Apple and Android users. A user can snap up to six pictures of an item and receive market intelligence details, Goodwin said, including price range, historical context, value of the market, provenance and more.
“We’re really focused on the dealer, the estate sales and auction houses that need to inventory lots of items,” Goodwin said. “We inventoried for a dealer: 175 of her items in 30 minutes. We took pictures of all 175 items, and it brought back a consolidated list of all of her inventory with descriptions and our market intelligence so that she could price things much better.”
Users can also print sales tags directly from the app, preventing issues like tag switching or price fudging that occasionally plague estate sales. At the end of the scanning process, all information can also be exported to online spreadsheets for inventory management.
Valuable started out as more of a consumer app for personal collections, but the founders noticed dealers and estate sales professionals were the ones using it most.
Valuable’s AI chat feature helps users seek further information about who owned the item and if it’s an original versus a reproduction. While accuracy is never going to be perfect with AI software, Wolpert said Valuable gives people the best set of information to make their own decisions.
“There is no way to handle accuracy, because the only way to accurately price a thing is to sell it. The value of the thing is what somebody will pay you for it,” Wolpert said. “But we can give you, effectively, the weather report on that item.”
The company uses a SaaS B2B2C model, enabling users to try five items free in the app before offering tiered subscriptions: $4.99 a month for up to 50 items, $9.99, for up to 200 items and then $19.99 a month for up to 5,000.
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Startup: Valuable App
Co-Founders: Bill Goodwin, Amy Wolpert, John Boezeman, Magdalyn Duffie, and John Wolpert
Founded: 2024
Team size: 5
Location: Raleigh
Website: www.valuable.app
Funding: Bootstrapped
The team raised an initial friends-and-family round but is planning to move from bootstrapped to pre-seed funding. They have pitched at Seed to Table in DC and Venture Connect in Raleigh and are closing a $250,000 round.
Valuable recently worked with a downsizing company that assists wealth transfer between generations. Goodwin said he has seen firsthand how rewarding it is to know the value of items passed down through generations.
“We just moved my parents out of their house, and it’s under contract, and my brother and I have inventoried just about everything,” Goodwin said. “And so it’s been amazing to help us divvy up what things are and keep things equitable, and really know what they have.”
