Trash or Treasure?

You expect to see valuable works of art hanging in museums, guarded by security workers who might warn you not to step too close. But what if while browsing in a thrift shop you stumbled across a Pablo Picasso or an ancient Roman sculpture? Would you realize what you had found?

The fine artworks shown on this page were all rediscovered by collectors of secondhand objects. If you’re ever sifting through items at a local garage sale or thrift store, think of the stories on these pages. You may find a treasure next to a board game or an old pair of sneakers!

Laura Young, a vintage shop owner in Austin, Texas, discovered a 52-pound marble bust at a Goodwill in 2018. She bought it for $34.99 and drove it home strapped into her car (see above). She had a hunch that it might be worth more.

Young contacted historians at the University of Texas. They confirmed that the bust dates back to 1st-century Rome. It once belonged to King Ludwig I of Bavaria, Germany. Experts aren’t sure who the sculpture depicts, but some believe it portrays a Roman military commander.

In 2017, Nancy Cavaliere was browsing her local thrift store in New York City when a set of painted plates, shown above, caught her eye. She decided to buy them—for $1.99 each.

Cavaliere did some internet sleuthing to learn more about the plates. She soon discovered that they were from a series of plates Pablo Picasso designed in the 1940s! The Spanish artist made them at a pottery studio in the French village of Madoura.

Cavaliere sold three of the plates for between $12,000 and $16,000 each, turning her $8 haul into a payday of more than $40,000. She kept the fourth plate to pass down to her daughter.

In 2014, brothers Robert, Ned, and Steven Landau found the peculiar painting shown above. It was underneath a Ping- Pong table in their late mother’s house in New Jersey.

They spoke to an auction appraiser to inquire about its value. The appraiser called the work “remarkably unremarkable.” He valued it between $250 and $800, thinking it might be a copy of a work by renowned Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669).

But when the painting went up for auction, some bidders believed it was important. They drove the price up to $1.1 million. The work was later confirmed to be Rembrandt’s long-lost 1624-25 Unconscious Patient (Allegory of Smell). It’s one of five paintings the artist made depicting the five senses.

A ceramics collector bought the jars shown above at a London thrift shop in 2022 for less than $25. The collector, who has remained anonymous, was curious about an inscription on the base of one of the jars. In their research, they learned that it’s the seal of Qianlong, the fourth Qing dynasty emperor of China, who ruled from 1735 to 1796.

The jars turned out to be very rare, and sold at auction for nearly $75,000! The collector intends to donate some of the profits to the shop where they discovered the jars.