is worth tons more than they thought. I've been buying and selling stuff for decades, and am always looking for rare stuff that is way underpriced. Generally, I just buy it for the asking price, and that's that. Except for one time:
I stopped at a garage sale in my small town in California. Not much there, it seemed, and there was a sign saying, "Need to Pay My Rent. Make Offer!"
Under the table where the woman running the sale had her "best stuff," I saw a dirty cardboard box. So, I pulled it out. It was full of old jewelry, all tarnished and black. I pulled out one of the pieces, and immediately saw that it was old Navajo turquoise and silver jewelry. There were dozens of pieces in the box. Very old, and they appeared to be high-quality work.
I asked the woman how much she wanted for the whole box. "$50" she said. Wow! But, I didn't buy it from her. Instead, I explained what it was and that it was worth far, far more than what she was asking. "How much more?" she asked. I told her that I didn't know, exactly, but that the total value might be over $10,000.
Then, I gave her the name of a dealer in Native American antiques and offered to call him for her. She said, "OK." So I did, and set up a meeting with him for her and myself. I knew the dealer and knew that he would offer her an honest appraisal and offer to buy her box of jewelry. Well, he said, "Come right in." So we went to his shop, after she shut down her garage sale.
I went along, to make sure she got fairly treated. Anyhow, the guy looked at each piece very carefully, and recognized most of it as probably made by a well-known Navajo artist. He offered her $7500 for the lot, after explaining that he wouldn't know for sure what its retail value would be until he had cleaned the tarnish off the pieces. The woman looked at me in shock, and asked me, privately, if it was a good price. I told her that it was and she accepted the offer. The dealer actually paid her on the spot for the jewelry.
During the process, the garage sale woman said that the jewelry had been handed down to her by her grandmother, who had died some years before. She said that she had played dress-up with it when she was a child, and had no idea what it was.
Anyhow, she was able to pay her rent for quite some time after that, I suppose. Like I said, I was always looking for underpriced stuff I could buy and sell for a profit, but there was no way I would have done that under those circumstances. There are limits.
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