A $3.99 Vase Caught Her Eye At A Virginia Goodwill—Six Months Later It Sold For Nearly $110,000

“I’m not a glass expert, but once I saw the Murano marking, I knew I wanted to buy it."

It was an ordinary June afternoon when Jessica Vincent decided to stop at a Goodwill in Richmond, Virginia. Despite the crowd, a glass vase caught her eye immediately.

“I saw that it was a solid piece of glass and that it was heavy, not junk,” Vincent told Elle Decor of the 13-inch vase wrapped in burgundy and green brushstrokes. On the bottom she noticed the etching of a single word: Murano.

“I’m not a glass expert, but once I saw the Murano marking, I knew I wanted to buy it,” Vincent, who raises polo horses, recalled in a statement to Southern Living. “When we got to the checkout, it was $3.99—I had been prepared to pay $8 or $9 for it, so I was super excited at the price.”

Vincent began researching the vase the moment she got home. She shared a photo of it in a Murano glass Facebook group where “everyone was excited by it.”

With help from the Facebook group, Vincent was able to identify the vase as a super-rare piece by famed Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa. The 1940s vase is part of the “Pennellate” series he designed for Venini, a glass workshop on Murano. Pennellate means "brush strokes" in Italian.

Despite a $10,000 offer from a member of the Facebook group, Vincent instead reached out to Wright Auction House in New York to “see what they would come back with.”

It wasn’t long before she was on the phone with Richard Wright, the founder of Wright Auction House, himself.

“We had a great phone call in which he explained how rare this piece was,” Vincent recalled. “After that, Sara [Blumberg] and Jim [Oliveira] (Wright’s glass experts) drove to Richmond. They confirmed it—and at that moment I had chills.”

“I can count on one hand the times this has happened over the years,” Blumberg told Elle Decor. “This is really a very, very rare occurrence—particularly at a Goodwill.”

Earlier today, Vincent’s vase hit the auction block as one of 33 lots featured in Wright’s Important Italian Glass sale. Bids for Scarpa’s Pennellate treasure opened at $24,000. Vincent said that she and her partner watched with tears in their eyes as the numbers kept going up and up.

“We thought it would stop at $60,000 or $70,000,” she said, “but it kept going.”

The vase Vincent bought at a Goodwill for $3.99 ultimately sold for a staggering $107,100—almost $50,000 more than the top end of the auction house’s estimate.

Vincent was shocked.

“The money means so much to us and will do so much for our lives and for our future together,” she said. “This has been a real blessing, and I’m so happy that the vase is going somewhere where it can be safe and fully appreciated (and that it’s out of obscurity from a Goodwill!)”

Richard Wright called the sale “a testament to the beauty and rarity of mid-century Murano glass.”

“To go from a humble $3.99 to today's auction triumph is a remarkable journey that speaks to the enduring allure of Carlo Scarpa’s work,” he said in a statement. “We are proud to have been a part of this work's incredible journey and pleased to see it land within a distinguished collection.”

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