'A winning lottery ticket': Virginia woman sells vase that cost her $3.99 at Goodwill for over $100,000 at auction

A Virginia woman chanced upon a once-in-a-lifetime find at the Goodwill off Route 1 in Hanover County: a vase designed in the 1940s by the famous Italian architect and former Venini glassworks director Carlo Scarpa.

Although ready to pay over $10 for the 13.5 inch tall bottle, Jessica Vincent ultimately brought home the rare collectible for $3.99. Last week, the bottle sold for $107,100 at auction.

"It's an amazing story, that this very sophisticated piece of glass finds its way to Virginia," Richard Wright, the founder of the auction house where the vase was sold, told Artnet. "It was expensive, not mass-produced, and it falls through the cracks all the way down to the Goodwill. It's not even chipped."

The vase, which looks like a glorified wine bottle, belongs to the Pennellate series designed by Scarpa for the art glass company Venini in the late 1940s.

"The technique itself—Pennellate meaning brushstroke—was achieved by adding colored opaque glass to the vase as it was being blown, and dragging the material around the circumference of the piece until the level of desired transparency was achieved," the Wright Auction House stated in its listing for the item.

Vincent developed an affinity for flea markets and secondhand stores at a young age, venturing out with her mother on bargain-seeking expeditions. Vincent, now 43, made it a habit of stopping by the Goodwill after completing her duties on her farm outside of Lynchburg, Virginia. Her routine pilgrimage to the thrift store proved especially fortuitous in June.

"It was so unusual. It had such quality. I knew it was a good piece of glass with the mark on the bottom," said Vincent.

When she got home from her shop, she went online in search of information about her inexpensive new acquisition. A dead giveaway was the "M" marked on the bottom, which she discovered denoted the Murano glass brand. Murano aficionados on Facebook helped her identify the piece, then were soon volunteering to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get their hands on it.

"People in the group said these are extremely rare, top-shelf pieces. People only dream of owning these. They said, 'I would die if I saw that out in the wild,'" Vincent told the Times-Dispatch. "It gave me chills to see all those comments."

Vincent ultimately took counsel from one of those in the Murano Facebook group and reached out to Wright's Auction House in New York. The auctioneer replied swiftly, noting "[t]hese are so incredibly rare. This color and this form."

Wright told Artnet, "[this] very charming woman who raises polo ponies finds it, and she isn't sure what she's found but she's smart enough to do her research. She finds the Italian glass group on Facebook and is smart enough not to sell it for the first offer she gets, of $10,000."

According to the Wright Auction House, the estimated value of the piece was between $30,000 and $50,000. The market evidently determined it was worth far more.

The Wednesday auction saw the vase go for over ten times what Vincent was initially offered. From the sale price, she received roughly $83,500. $23,600 went to the auction house.

"If it had a chip — even a small chip — it would have probably sold for under $10,000," Wright told the New York Times. "This was like a winning lottery ticket."

"You never know what you're going to find," said Vincent. It's the thrill of the hunt."

Rare Italian vase sells for over $100K at Chicago auction houseyoutu.be

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