It should go like this:

Have collector's glove up
Uncover item and click it again
Box pops up saying 0/30 wear and 0% rarity

Using your various collectibility actions you can raise rarity while also raising wear. Do not exceed 30 wear! This typically means you get 3 appraisals (though one particular appraisal skill increases wear by 15 -- nobody uses this, and there's an ability to reduce wear incurred to 5).

You want to get rarity above the minimum (and not much more) that Rowena will accept. Going for tier 2 is definitely not as good as getting more tier 1 items. Appraisals increase wear and reduce the % on the node's bar so you won't be collecting a lot of items. It's very different from gathering normal items. Best case scenario you walk away with 4 items, though 2 is typical.

In any case, after you've used those abilities you can now hit the collect button. You'll then be prompted to keep the item as collectible or not (if not you'll collect a normal version of the item). Note that you can still miss even though it's no longer displayed as prominently (technically you can get HQ as well which still affects exp and the visual/ sound generated but has no additional effect on rarity). If you're overflowing with GP or your gathering rate is too low not to use a +gathering rate ability then go ahead, but usually you'll need all or nearly all of your GP for the expensive collectibility actions.