CollectorVault separates three kinds of claims about an object, because they deserve different levels of trust.
Owner statements
What the collector says about their own item: where it came from, what they paid, family history. Owner statements are honest context, not verification — treat provenance stories as leads to check, not conclusions.
AI assists
Automated identification can suggest a category, era, or comparable sales fast. It is a starting point with a confidence level, not an appraisal, and it can be confidently wrong about rare variants — exactly the items collectors care most about.
Expert review
A named specialist putting their reputation on a claim: authentication, grading, attribution. This is the strongest label, and it is also the one to verify — real experts are specific about what they examined and how.
The habit that matters
When you record an item, note the source of each claim. "Grandfather said it was his father's" and "PSA graded it 7 in 2019" are both useful — as long as they are never confused with each other.