Would this not be cool? you get some cool armor but you don't know it's worth, you go to sell it to warmaidens and they are offering you a pretty low ball price of what it could be worth, why not get it appraised? that would be cool and offer a great way to get some lore into the game other then in book. how?

Lets say you take in an Elven sword to the armor and weapons appraiser. he or she would then tell you the story behind the armor in general, the elven armor, where it came from, who first made it all that jazz, then you get an estimate price on it, for a fee of course. the fee could be like a quest.

what do you guys think? maybe it could be in a DLC area? i mean if their doing that then their getting voice actors and stuff. i think it would be cool, get some lore like what big major battles the armor took place in, what factions used it then and now...

Perhaps, it should only work with rarer relic armour or something though.

This would be cool.... but would also kind of require their be an actual economy in the game. I can sell the same man 2000 iron daggers and he will pay the same thing for dagger 2000 as he did 1, even though he will never sell all 2000 daggers back out... there are not that many citizens who actually pay for things. Now bandits might want the daggers but I think they would just take them.

So nothing is really priced based on how rare it is. I can make all the iron in the game turn to gold, which should make gold prices plummet and make iron and steel very expensive... but it doesn't.

I like it as an idea, but there will be repetition after getting each set item appraised once. There are not that many different set styles.
You might also tie in the response to the race of the appraiser. Different races were on different sides of various battles after all, so there could be different historical perspectives or biases.

Perhaps for unique weapons and armor, but not the common varieties - although perhaps it could also work for Daedric armor?

A better idea and one that needs appraisal would be cursed items. You find "unknown" items. You try it out or get it appraised. It cost alot, e.g., price is about 1/2 of actual worth of item. 50 percent of time it is a pretty good item and you can wear it (but still not know what it does). Or it can be shown to be cursed. If it is cursed, you have no idea how to get rid of it. An appraisal is needed to figure out how to get rid of the curse (which could be a mini-quest e.g., go pray at this alter for 10 hours). You can hand place all items in dungeons/areas.