When shopping at the thrift store, who knows what treasures you might find? A glass vase that was purchased for $3.99 from a Goodwill store in Virginia was auctioned off for over $107,000 after it was discovered to be a rare piece.
Jessica Vincent and her partner were visiting their local Goodwill store in Richmond, Virginia, when a red and sea-foam green vase stood out to her. “People tell me I have a good eye,” Vincent said. “You can put me in an aisle with a whole bunch of dollar store stuff and I can pick out the one item with a little bit of value.”
Vincent purchased the vase for just $3.99 and took it home. She decided to take some photos of the vase to share online where members of her glassware Facebook group identified the piece as coming from Carlo Scarpa’s “Pennellate” series, which he released while serving as the creative director of Venini in 1942.
The vase was later verified by the Chicago-based Wright auction house and was valued at around $30,000 to $50,000. When it was placed on the auction block, it ended up fetching a bid of $107,100 from a European collector.
Vincent took home about $83,500 from the sale, while the auction house received about $23,600. According to Vincent, the money will allow her to fix up a farmhouse she built in January 2023.
In the end, she’s glad to see that the vase found a good home. “I knew I wanted to get it back in the art world. They didn’t know it existed,” Vincent said. “I feel like I saved it from obscurity.”