§ How it works · Buyers and sellers

Both sides of a piece.

What happens when you list, what happens when you buy, where a person steps in, and how the money moves. The mechanics, in plain English.

Four sections
№ 001
If you're selling

Six photos in, a live listing out.

The incumbents take two to six weeks to authenticate a piece. We target minutes for the auto-decide path and hours for escalations. The trade-off is per-piece routing; some listings will go to a human. The trade-off is intentional.

Minutes to verdict on the auto-decide path. Hours when a person looks. Not weeks.

Submit

Six angles, laid flat

Hero front, hero back, label or maker mark, hardware close-up, interior lining, and any condition flag (a stain, a worn corner, a repair). The angles are fixed to keep the reference set comparable. You shoot once, and the same six photos travel with the piece on its verification report.

Score

The ensemble runs against your photos

Three model kinds score your photos and metadata. The ensemble produces a confidence score and a routing decision. High agreement resolves automatically; the middle band routes to operator review. Either path produces a verdict and a public verification report.

Live

On a positive verdict the listing goes live

The listing posts to the catalog with the confidence score and a link to the verification report. You set the ask.

Fees

One platform fee. No tiered upsells.

Coat Rack collects a 10% marketplace facilitation fee on each completed sale. No listing fee, no premium-placement upsell, no boosted-listing tier. Payment processing fees are absorbed inside the 10%. Sales tax, where applicable, is collected by the platform under marketplace facilitator rules.

Payout

Five to ten days from sale to bank

Funds sit in escrow at checkout. After the buyer accepts the piece, or after the 72-hour inspection window closes without a claim, payout runs through Stripe Connect. From sale to your bank account, expect 5 to 10 days. The window is honest, not optimized away — it includes the inspection window, the standard Stripe Connect transfer hold, and your bank's own clearing time.

KYC

Identity verification through Stripe Connect

To receive payouts you complete a Stripe Connect onboarding flow. Stripe collects the legal-entity details it requires (name, address, date of birth, last digits of a tax ID). We do not see or store the raw documents. Stripe handles the verification and issues your 1099-K at year end; the federal threshold is $600.

High-value cap

Pieces above the threshold get a manual pre-listing review

At MVP we cap declared value per piece. Listings above $5,000 are routed to a manual pre-listing review before they go live. The cap is documented inline in the upload flow.

№ 002
If you're buying

The verification report is the buyer's brief.

Every listing carries a public verification report. The comparators the ensemble found, the operator note (if one looked), the signed receipt, the sub-score breakdown on stitching, hardware, tag, and construction. You can read it without an account and link to it from anywhere.

Browse

The catalog and the report

Each listing on the catalog deep-links to its verification report. Confidence score, comparators, and sub-scores are visible before you check out, not buried.

Check out

Funds sit in escrow

You pay into escrow at checkout. The seller does not see the money until you accept the piece or the 72-hour window closes without a claim.

Receive

A 72-hour window to inspect

On delivery you have 72 hours to inspect the piece against the listing photos and the receipt. If anything is off, you open a claim and the payout pauses.

№ 003
When a person looks

The middle band gets a human reviewer.

When the ensemble agrees with itself, the verdict resolves automatically. When it doesn’t, the middle band, a human reviewer steps in. They see the same photos and the same comparator set the model found, write a short note, and attach a verdict. The note is public on the verification report.

Routing thresholds, the operator queue, and how the reference set grows live on Technicals.

№ 004
Buyer protection

Escrow and a 72-hour window.

A confidence score is not the last line. The buyer pays into escrow; the seller does not see the money until the inspection window closes. Within those hours, the buyer can accept the piece or open a claim.

§ Inline mechanism

72-hr inspection window. Funds held until you confirm.

Escrow

Funds sit with the platform

Funds are authorized at checkout and held by the platform through the inspection window. The seller is paid out after the buyer accepts the piece, or after the window closes without a claim. No exceptions for promotions or rush listings.

Claims

Substitution and not-as-described

A claim opened during the inspection window pauses payout. The operator team reviews the claim against the listing photos, the verification report, and any receipt photos the buyer attached. Resolution is one of two outcomes, refund or release.

§ What this is not

Coat Rack does not currently offer a financial authenticity guarantee. The mechanism above is an inspection window plus operator-driven adjudication, paid out of escrow. Read the full terms on the buyer protection page.

§ Next

Days, not weeks. Lower prices. Same verdict.