The six-point standard, explained

A marketplace is only as honest as its worst listing. We learned that the hard way in serviced rentals, where a beautiful photograph can hide a generator that fails at midnight and a 'concierge' who is really a phone that rings out. The fix was never more photographs. It was inspection — six specific things, checked by a person we employ, every time.

When CitiesTroves opened its other worlds — estates, motors, yachts, aviation, jewellery, collectibles — the temptation was to borrow trust from documents alone: titles, logbooks, lab reports. Documents matter, and we read all of them. But paper is where verification starts, not where it ends. A service book tells you an engine was stamped; it does not tell you who stamped it, or whether the oil was actually changed. So every world gets its own six points, and at least two of them must be physical: a person standing in front of the thing, measuring it.

In estates that means a surveyor on the roof and a title search at the registry, in the same week. In motors it means paint-depth readings and a chassis-number match done in daylight. In aviation it means logbooks reconciled against the engine programme provider's own records — not the broker's summary of them. In jewellery it means the stone out of its mount and on the scale. The six points differ; the discipline does not.

The crest you see on a listing is therefore not a badge of taste. It is a record that a named member of our team completed a checklist and signed it. We keep the signature. When a buyer asks 'who verified this?', there is a person, and the person has a name, and the name is on file. That is the entire system. It is expensive, slow, and the reason the collections are small.

Small is acceptable to us. The worlds will grow at the speed of inspection, not the speed of upload. A marketplace that grows faster than its checking is just a photo gallery with prices. We have those already; the internet is full of them. What it lacks — what Lagos and Accra and Cape Town and London lack equally — is a place where 'verified' is a verb that happened, with a date and a signature. That is the gap CitiesTroves exists to close.

If you own something extraordinary and can tolerate our process, we would like to see it. Bring the papers; we will bring the scales.