Sometimes the best investment advice sounds very simple: if you like a painting, take a closer look at the signature.
This summer, a collector arrived rather late to an estate sale in Michigan — almost everything interesting had already been picked over. In a dark hallway on the way to the garage, he noticed a small gray painting with seashells.
The price was only 30 dollars.
In the corner was a signature: “Abercrombie, ’51”.
The buyer decided to take a chance and brought the find home. And later, while visiting an exhibition of the American surrealist artist Gertrude Abercrombie, he suddenly saw in the catalogue an old photograph… of that very painting.
Experts confirmed: it really is a work believed lost, Alderman Merriam’s Shells, painted in 1951. Moreover, it turned out that the artist had once given it to a doctor in exchange for a medical procedure. After that, the painting remained with one family for about 75 years, until it accidentally ended up in an ordinary sale.
Now the auction house Freeman’s estimates it at $150 000–250 000. The auction is scheduled for 1 October.
That is, potentially the invested $30 could turn into a quarter of a million.
A rare case when the phrase “I’ll take it, she looks kind of lovely” really did turn out to be a brilliant investment strategy.
The story is confirmed by the auction house itself, Freeman’s: the painting’s estimate really is $150–250 thousand.
