A woman who bought a glass vase for $3.99 at a local Goodwill charity shop has seen the piece auctioned off for more than $100,000 after it turned out to be a rare and valuable piece of Italian glassware.
Jessica Vincent had bought the item at a Goodwill thrift store in Hanover county, Virginia, and had an inkling that it might have been worth a little more than was usual, she told the New York Times.
“I had a sense that it might be a $1,000 or $2,000 piece, but I had no clue how good it actually was until I did a little bit more research,” she told the paper after noticing a small ‘M’ on its bottom which she suspected might stand for Murano, an Italian island near Venice famed for glasswork.
After snapping it up for a penny short of four bucks, Vincent researched the piece online where enthusiasts pointed out it resembled a work by the famous Italian architect Carlo Scarpa.
Vincent eventually sent pictures of the vase to the Wright Auction House and almost immediately its president, Richard Wright, got in touch for a chat. “The minute I saw the photos I had a really good feeling,” Wright told the Times.
Last week it sold for $107,100 to an unidentified private art collector in Europe after it was officially identified as being part of Scarpa’s 1940s “Pennellate” series .
