Jessica Vincent, a resident of Lynchburg, Virginia, purchased a vase for $3.99 at Goodwill, which was later identified as a rare piece designed by Carlos Scarpa, ultimately selling for over $100,000.
The vase, part of Scarpa’s “Pennellate” series from the 1940s, was authenticated by glass experts and auctioned off, with the proceeds significantly impacting Vincent’s life.
Despite her initial attachment to the vase, she decided to sell it to address pressing financial needs and hopes it will find a place in a museum. (Trending: Hunter Biden’s Art Scheme Exposed By GOP Probe)
A shopper paid $3.99 for an elegant vase at a Goodwill store in Virginia — and it turned out to be a piece from the 1940s by famed Italian architect Carlos Scarpa that’s worth $100,000. pic.twitter.com/kztRehnUAK
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 19, 2023
“It’s a really special piece, and it will always have a special place in my heart and in my life,” Vincent said.
“It changed my life. The money couldn’t have come at a better time,” she added. “Having the story go viral was very unexpected for me,” she said.
“The different news outlets and media coverage the story got was pretty incredible. I was doing podcasts and live morning shows, experiences I never thought I would be having. All because of something I’ve done countless times in my life: going to the thrift store.”
“We walked in and it was a little bit busier than normal, but I saw the vase right away,” Vincent said.
“I did not know what it was, but I saw that it was a large bottle and it had interesting colors. I wanted to check it out but there were just so many people in that aisle. It was just kind of jammed up, so I decided to circle back later and see what else was shaking.”
“There really wasn’t much of anything in there that caught my eye that day,” she said. “I would have loved to have kept it, but in reality I really needed the money more than I needed the vase.”
“Then I remembered the bottle, so I went back to it and picked it up,” she said. “I realized it was really nice, and I could tell it was blown glass. It just had this beautiful iridescence and I was so surprised that nobody had picked it up before I did.”
“I knew Murano glass was pretty nice,” she said. “So I was like, ‘You’re coming home with me.’”
“But I knew that even if it was $8.99, I was going to buy it,” she said. “And $8.99, in my mind, was a lot. But I decided that I liked it, so we put it into the cart.”
“The lady looked at it and said, ‘$3.99,” Vincent said.
“I said, ‘Perfect. I will take it.’ That was a great price in my mind. I was excited to get it home and sort of do a little bit of research to see if I could decipher that top mark and find out who made it, because I knew that would give me a little more information on the age and sort of what it was.”
“One person from the group commented that they’re extremely rare,” Vincent said of a Facebook group member.
“You just do not see them outside of museums or really high-end private collections. He said, ‘I have dreamed about pieces like these for my whole life, and I could never afford one. It’s amazing.’ It just gave me chills,” she said.
“It was the look of amazement,” Vincent recalled of showing the vase to Richard Wright of Wright Auctions. “He said, ‘This is authentic.’ I think everybody had chill bumps. It was a very intense moment. It’s an incredibly rare piece of glass designed by Carlos Scarpa,” Wright said. “For a period in his early career, Scarpa designed glass. This piece was made in the post-WWII era … and produced in very small numbers.”
“It’s literally an expression of the power of design and craft to transcend the object — to become an art object itself,” Wright said. “What we don’t know is how it ends up in Virginia,” Wright said, “and gets separated from the idea of it being an expensive art piece, and then gets donated to a Goodwill.”
“If it had a chip in it, it would’ve been worth less than $10,000,” Wright said.
“So it’s, it’s just amazing that it gets through their system undamaged and set out on a shelf for $3.99. Then Jessica’s savvy enough to spot it. She didn’t know exactly what it was, but she knew it was better than $4. I’m happy it went back into the art world and that everybody now knows that it exists.”
“I had all the emotions leading up to it,” Vincent said. “When the numbers started creeping up, up and up — $70,000, $75,000, $80,000 — my jaw just hit the floor. I just — it was unbelievable. But in such a good way. I felt like I had a winning lottery ticket.”
“I described the piece briefly and thanked Jessica for entrusting us with it and telling a little bit of the story,” Wright said. “Then we opened the bidding at $24,000. By the end of it, with our buyer’s premium, it made over $100,000,” he added.
“I just bought an old farmhouse and it’s very cold here,” Vincent said. “Right now, I have two space heaters, so I’m really excited about getting heat and updating windows and stuff like that. And having a little breathing room too, like a little nest egg.”
“I would have loved to have kept it, but in reality I really needed the money more than I needed the vase,” she said. “And I feel like I didn’t really have the proper place to display it. I’m sort of happy it went back into the art world and that everybody now knows that it exists. It is a masterpiece of Carlos Scarpa — and my hope is that it may end up in a museum. I think that was the right thing for it.”
“It’s an amazing journey,” Wright said. “It was sold to a project collector in Europe going into a very fine collection and the client has purchased a lot of spectacular pieces from us. I would like to think someday it would be donated to a museum. So that would be the ultimate full circle.”
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