GUEST: We found this at a thrift store near Minneapolis, Minnesota. I stopped at the hardware store, my wife didn't want to go to the hardware store, so I dropped her off at the thrift store to kill some time. When I went back in to pick her up, I found this painting there.
APPRAISER: How much did it cost in the thrift store? $6.99 plus tax. It was in very poor condition. It was torn, it was dirty, had a hole in it. It was Halloween weekend, and it appeared to me it had been decorated for Halloween, because there were some pumpkins there around it. And the figure's eyes were blackened in with a permanent marker, like a jack-o'-lantern eye. And her fingernails were blackened. Everything about it looked old and original, and I just thought it deserved a little more research. We actually researched it while we were still in the store. And lo and behold, it pops up, and... I couldn't believe it.
APPRAISER: Well, what you've brought is an oil-on-canvas painting, and it is signed in the lower right, E. Potthast. And Edward Henry Potthast was a Cincinnati-born artist, got his basic training, but he really ended up in New York, and he carved out his reputation for painting in New York City. And he was best known for painting scenes of Coney Island. When Potthast was in New York, he would have very likely painted commissioned portraits. It was a means to make a living. Potthast really reached his maturity when he was in New York. The neat thing about this particular portrait is that it is from his mature period. The landscape work in the background is much more advanced than the kind of work he was doing in Cincinnati. Edward Potthast moved permanently to New York City in 1895. And I would place this probably 19-teens or 1920s. You had it restored. Probably a significant amount of restoration, right?
GUEST: $1,400.
APPRAISER: What about the frame?
GUEST: That was $300 extra.
APPRAISER: An example like this, in a nice restored condition, at auction would be expected to fetch around $8,000 to $12,000.
GUEST: (chuckling): Very good, very good.
APPRAISER: That's proof that, that it can still happen, that people can still find great things in thrift stores.
GUEST: Yeah, it can be done.
