Thrift Shopper Sells Her $3.99 Goodwill Vase for $107,100 in an Auction

Television shows like Antiques Roadshow inspire many people to comb through thrift stores looking for a hidden gem that is really worth a lot of money. Most of us are unsuccessful. I have a basement full of stuff as proof.

However, for one Virginia woman, a $3.99 vase she bought at Goodwill turned out to be worth thousands. Here’s the full story on the $3.99 Carlo Scarpa glass vase bought at Goodwill that sold for $107,000 at auction.

Virginia resident Jessica Vincent was wandering the aisles at a Goodwill store near Richmond, Va., when she saw the glass vase and was attracted to the ribbons of green and red that swirled around it, The New York Times reported.

Vincent told The New York Times that she is an avid thrifter who grew up shopping at thrift stores with her mother. She had found other gems in the past, so she had a feeling that the “M” on the bottom meant the vase was Murano glass, a special type of valuable glass made on the Italian island of Murano, per the newspaper.

After purchasing the vase for just $3.99, Vincent took it home and did a little digging into its possible value. “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,” Vincent told The New York Times.

According to CBS News, Vincent shared her find in a Facebook group for people who collect Italian glass, and she was referred to Wright Auction House in Chicago, which has experience dealing in Italian glass.

Wright Auction House president Richard Wright told the Associated Press he knew the vase was valuable as soon as he received an email from Vincent. The vase is the work of the 20th-century Italian glass designer Carlo Scarpa, the AP reported. It is part of Scarpa’s 1942 “Pennellate” collection.

"It's a very well-documented piece of glass," Wright told CBS News. "Carlo Scarpa is really one of the preeminent, most famous glass designers of Italian glass in the midcentury. So his designs are valued by the market right at the top."

Wright Auction House estimated that the vase was valued between $30,000 and $50,000. But, when the auction was held, it actually sold for $107,100, which is more than twice than the price at which it was appraised, AP reported.

Vincent will get $83,500 from the sale of her Goodwill find, which she plans to use to upgrade her 1930s farmhouse. “I’m not independently wealthy, so it’s going to be really good to have a little breathing room,” Vincent told the AP.

If you have time to kill today, it seems like browsing your local thrift shop for priceless decor could be a worthwhile activity.