Jessica Vincent and her Goodwill find.Photo:Courtesy of Jessica Vincent
Courtesy of Jessica Vincent
Virginia horse trainer Jessica Vincent got a sizable Christmas bonus after grabbing a pretty $3.99 vase off a Goodwill shelf.
“It was the thrifters equivalent of winning the lottery,” Vincent, 43, tells PEOPLE. “I read about these things all the time but I thought, ‘Could I have really just bought a masterpiece at Goodwill?'”
The Carlo Scarpa Rare Pennellate vase.Courtesy of Jessica Vincent
“I picked it up and I could tell that it was blown glass, and it just had a beautiful iridescence,” Vincent says. “When I got close to it, I knew it was coming home with me.”
She saw a mark on the bottom of the glass with Murano and Italia stamped on it.
It didn’t have a price tag on it, but she said she was going to buy it even if it was expensive. To her luck, the clerk said it was only $3.99.
Jessica Vincent and her partner Naza Acosta.Courtesy of Jessica Vincent
She says she got chills when one Facebook member told her: “Those are very rare. Every collector would love to have that. But most people cannot afford them.”
“I figured when the CEO of the auction house wants to have a phone call with you it’s probably pretty special,” Vincent says. “And he was just telling me how incredibly rare these are and the color that this was in and the form that it was in. I think they only know of one other one in these colors.”
Vincent says she would have loved to keep the vase but needed the money. Plus, once she realized the worth, she was nervous about having it sitting out. She quickly boxed and wrapped it for fear it would get chipped or broken.
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“I was stressed having it at my little 1930s farmhouse,” Vincent says. “And I just bought the farm and everything needs to be fixed. I don’t even have heat.”
It made sense, she said, to send it back to the art world. As for her windfall, she’s already got plans to get her home heated and to purchase a dishwasher. She also works with rescue horses and plans to put some money into that as well.
“I feel like I saved the vase and the vase saved me,” Vincent says.
source: people.com
