Visiting thrift shops and antique stores is one of my all-time favorite activities. It’s so enjoyable to walk into one of these stores and look through one’s “junk,” only to find yourself a beautiful treasure. Not only are many secondhand items still in pretty good condition, but their prices are phenomenal. It’s the best of both worlds.
But when you’re working in one of their environments, never do you really expect to come across an item that’s rare and high in value. Those items would probably instead go to auction, be sold on eBay, or even be placed in a museum depending on what it is. So, can you imagine how North Carolina thrift store volunteer, Wendy Hawkins, felt when she came across a rare, original Salvador Dali woodcarving one day? She was equally shocked as she was ecstatic!
“One day I saw this, with a bunch of other paintings lined up on the floor, and I said, ‘This is old, this is something special,'” she recalled.
Due to her interest, she asked the shop if they’d call in an expert to get it checked out.
Upon getting inspected, it turned out that the woodcarving really was something special as Hawkins predicted. An expert confirmed that it was a work entitled The Divine Comedy by Salvador Dali. It even had the creator’s signature.
“This matches all the information, all the reference and so it checked off all the things in order to confirm it was an original,” said Melanie Smith, a fine arts appraiser at the International Society of Appraisers. “This series has 100 different images for the series, because Dante wrote 100 different verses, or cantos.”
Michael Lewis, the executive director of the Outer Banks Hotline that runs the thrift shops was surprised.
“We’ve had situations where we thought something was original and was amazing and it wasn’t, and I was still expecting her to say ‘Oh no, it wasn’t really anything,'” he said. “But it was.”
It was not only rare to come across a piece like this in the thrift shop, which normally sells similar items for about $10 t0 $50, but this piece is rare all-around!
“It’s rare to find anything like this. It’s like a treasure hunt, and thanks to Wendy, it’s been rescued and brought to light so people in the art world can really enjoy it,” said Smith.
And there’s no telling who even dropped it off at the shop. Chances are, the previous owner didn’t know of the piece’s value.
“We get things donated in the middle of the night and sometimes people just drop off things and leave, so we have no idea who donated it,” Lewis explained.
The original work sold for $1,200. The money from the purchase went to the store’s shelter, which temporarily houses domestic abuse victims. Part of the money also went towards anti-bullying advocation and other programs.
Observe the beautiful Salvador Dali carving below. I’ve never seen anything like it!
