4. A good Heade for bargains
One day, an employee at a tool-and-die company in Indiana spent $30 for a few pieces of used furniture and an old painting of some flowers. When he got his new stuff home, he decided to strategically hang the picture to cover up a hole in the wall that had been bugging him. Some years later he was playing a board game called Masterpiece in which players attempt to outbid one another for artwork at an auction. Much to his surprise, one of the cards in the game featured a painting of flowers that looked a lot like the one he had on his wall. So he went online and found that his painting was similar in style to the work of Martin Johnson Heade, an American still-life artist best known for landscapes and flower arrangements. Through his research he found the Kennedy Galleries in Manhattan, which handles many of Heade's works, and asked them to take a look at his painting.
They agreed and were able to verify that the piece of artwork covering the hole in his wall was a previously unknown Heade painting, since named Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth.
In 1999, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston purchased the painting for $1.2 million dollars. I emailed the Museum to ask if the painting was covering a hole in the wall, but I didn't get a reply. As you go in search of your nest egg, keep in mind the old adage: "It's only worth what the market will bear." Sometimes finding treasure is the easy part; finding someone willing to buy it can be the real challenge.
5. It's nice, but it's no Middleham Jewel...
Every Sunday afternoon for the last seven years, Mary Hannaby had gone for a walk with her metal detector. She'd never really found anything of value, but she liked getting the exercise, so she kept at it. On one Sunday in June 2009, her detector beeped, and she bent down to dig up what she thought was going to be another common coin or old nail. Instead, she uncovered a postage stamp-sized gold pendant featuring an intricate carving of the crucifixion of Jesus. Maybe she had finally hit the jackpot.
Upon inspection by the British Museum, the pendant was described as "an important find," and they estimated the market value to be around £4,000 (about $6,600).
Still, they decided not to purchase it for their collection, so Mary took the pendant to Sotheby's. The experts at the auction house felt the piece was much more valuable, because it was believed to be one of only three similar items known to exist. Their initial estimate was £250,000 ($415,900), but said it could easily sell for as much as £2.5 million ($4.1 million) thanks to its resemblance to another English treasure also found with a metal detector, the Middleham Jewel. But as the saying goes, "Never count your millions until the auctioneer bangs his gavel." Sotheby's put the pendant up for auction on July 9, 2009, making it the highlight of a large lot of antique sculptures.
Clearly the expectations were high. The bidding started at £30,000 (about $49,900), but as the final call was made, the best offer was only £38,000 (about $63,200) -- far below the reserve price to make a sale.
6. A possible Pollock
In 1992, Teri Horton, a retired truck driver, went to her local thrift store to buy a depressed friend a gag gift. She found a rather large painting -- 66 inches by 47 inches -- that she thought was pretty amusing because it was, in her opinion, so ugly. When she asked the thrift store employee the price, they said $8. She haggled and only paid $5.
In the end, her friend didn't want it (she, too, thought it was ugly, plus it wouldn't fit through the door of her trailer), so Teri took it home and tried to unload it at her garage sale. A local art teacher saw the painting and suggested it could very well be a Jackson Pollock. In response, Teri famously asked the teacher, "Who the f is Jackson Pollock?" Since that day, Teri Horton has been struggling to prove that her thrift store treasure is a lost piece of artwork potentially worth well over $100 million.
However, due to the painting's lack of verifiable history of ownership (called "provenance"), the piece is disputed by many fine arts experts as simply another artist's work inspired by Pollock. To find proof of Pollock, Teri had the work examined by a forensic specialist who claims to have found a fingerprint that matches one in Pollock's studio. But even the fingerprint evidence has been disputed by the art world, leaving the painting, as yet, unsold. Teri, her painting, and her battle with the art world elite became the subject of a 2006 documentary called, appropriately, Who the *$&% is Jackson Pollock?
Courtesy - MentalFloss.c0m
