Rare $3.99 Goodwill find nets lucky Virginia woman Jessica Vincent six-figure payday

An unassuming vase picked up at a Virginia Goodwill store for $3.99 turned out to be an ultra-rare piece of Murano glass which sold at auction for $107,100 — nearly $50k more than the auction house anticipated.

The lucky finder was Jessica Vincent, who spotted the 13-inch green and burgundy streaked vase during a random stop at a Richmond Goodwill in June.

“I saw that it was a solid piece of glass and that it was heavy, not junk,” the eagle-eyed thrifter told Elle Decor of her epic find.

Her next clue that the vase might be something more than the typical thrift-store find came when she turned it over and noticed the word “Murano” etched on the bottom, indicating it originated on the famous glassblowing island off the coast of Venice, Italy.

“I’m not a glass expert, but once I saw the Murano marking, I knew I wanted to buy it,” Vincent told Southern Living.

She took her prize to the register and was pleasantly surprised that it only cost $3.99, saying she was expecting to pay $8 or $9. But that bit of good fortune was only a hint of what was to come.

Upon returning home, Vincent, who raises polo horses, immediately began conducting online research to learn more about it, including posting a photo to a Murano glass Facebook group.

“Everyone was excited by it,” she said.

Members of the group helped her ID the vase as part of a collection produced in the 1940s by famed Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, part of his “Pennellate” series (meaning “brush strokes” in Italian), which he designed for the Venini glass workshop on the island of Murano.

Upon her discovery, somebody in the group offered Vincent $10,000 on the spot, which is when she knew she really might have her hands on something special.

Rather than accepting the tempting offer, she instead sought the expertise of New York’s Wright Auction House. The next thing she knew she was on the phone with auction house founder Richard Wright.

“We had a great phone call in which he explained how rare this piece was,” Vincent recalled to the magazine.

After speaking, Wright’s resident glass experts made the drive down to Richmond to confirm her find, a moment that Vincent said gave her chills.

“I can count on one hand the times this has happened over the years,” Wright Auction House glass expert Sara Blumberg told Elle Decor.

“This is really a very, very rare occurrence — particularly at a Goodwill.”

This week, Vincent’s diamond-in-the-rough find fetched an unthinkable $107,100 at a Wright auction featuring 33 lots of Italian glass — more than $50,000 higher than even the auction house expected.

When the hammer came down, Vincent and her partner were overcome with joy at the life-changing sum of money it sold for.

“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!)”