Arizona woman purchases oil painting for $1, could be worth $10K
Feb 27, 2018, 4:08 AM | Updated: 12:16 pm
(Mearto.com Photo)
PHOENIX — An Arizona woman who bought an oil painting at a thrift store for $1 reportedly learned it may be worth up to $10,000.
Irish website The Journal said that Stacey Muhammad of Phoenix said that the painting was originally priced at $1.99 but bought it on a day when the store was doing a 50 percent-off sale.
“I don’t necessarily have an eye for rare or expensive art but the painting was interesting to look at, so I took a chance to see if it was worth anything,” Muhammad.
Muhammad submitted pictures of the painting to Mearto.com, an art appraisal site. Within 16 minutes, the site attributed the work to Daniel O’Neill and it also said that the piece was worth somewhere between $4,000 and $10,000.
“I knew nothing about the artist, but I knew it was an original oil painting,” Muhammad said. “Plus, I just liked the colors in it, so I thought, well I will just buy it to research the artist.”
According to Mearto, O’Neill was an Irish painter who was an electrician by day and painted just as a hobby during World War II.
Mearto said the estimate was based on recent past recorded sales.
The painting was left at an auction house to be cleaned and will be sold off in the next few weeks.