An unassuming vase purchased for $3.99 at a Goodwill store in Virginia turned out to be an extremely rare piece of Murano glass and sold at auction for $107,100, nearly $50,000 more than the auction house's estimate.
The lucky finder was Jessica Vincent, who came across the 13-inch green and burgundy striped vase while at a Goodwill in Richmond in June.
“I could tell it wasn't junk, but a solid piece of glass and it was heavy,” the eagle-eyed thrift store owner told Elle Decor about the incredible find.
Her next clue that this might not be your average thrift store vase came when she turned it over and noticed the word “Murano” inscribed on the bottom, indicating that it was made on an island off the coast of Venice, Italy, famous for glassblowing.
“I'm no glass expert, but as soon as I saw the Murano stamp I knew I wanted to buy it,” Vincent told Southern Living.
She took her prize to the register and was pleasantly surprised to find that it cost only $3.99 instead of the $8 or $9 she expected. But that bit of luck was just a preview of things to come.
Vincent, who breeds polo horses, began researching online as soon as he returned home, posting photos to a Murano glass Facebook group and beginning to find out more.
“Everybody was excited,” she said.
Members of the group helped her identify the vase as being part of a collection created in the 1940s by famous Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, and part of his “Penerate” (Italian for “brushstroke”) series, designed for the Venini glass factory on the island of Murano.
When she found it, someone in the group offered Vincent $10,000 on the spot, and it was at that moment that she realized she might have really got something special.
Instead of accepting the attractive offer, she sought the expertise of the Wright auction house in New York, and found herself on the phone with the auction house's founder, Richard Wright.
“We had a great call, during which he explained how unusual the piece was,” Vincent recalled to the magazine.
After finishing her talk, Wright's glass experts drove to Richmond to confirm her find, a moment that Vincent said was horrifying.
“Over the years, I could count the number of times this has happened on one hand,” Sarah Blumberg, a glass expert at Wright Auction House, told Elle Decor.
“This is really a very unusual occurrence, especially at Goodwill.”
This week, Vincent's rough find sold at a Wright auction, which featured 33 pieces of Italian glass, for an incredible $107,100 — more than $50,000 above the auction house's estimate.
When the bid went through, Vincent and his partner were overwhelmed with joy at having sold for such a life-changing sum.
“This money means a lot to us and will go a long way towards our livelihood and future,” she said. “We're so grateful and so glad the vase will go somewhere safe and well-appreciated (and leave Goodwill unnamed!).”
