It takes special skills to be successful at thrifting. You have to have an idea of what you might be in the market for. You’ll need the patience to search through racks and racks of clothes or sift through bins of used goods. You need an eye for the unique. And a little luck never hurts either.
One Illinois man had plenty of that luck when he went shopping at Goodwill. While there, he bought a plate for $4.99. He would later learn that it was worth way more than that.
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Google Lens helped verify the plate’s worth.
John Carcerano, a carpet cleaner, found a porcelain plate at the secondhand store, the New York Post reports. At first, the plate, which he learned was an 18th-century Chinese armorial export plate, was hidden by a more modern piece. Once he got that out of the way, Carcerano used Google Lens to take a photo of the item to learn its origins and estimated value.
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"I knew within five minutes that I had something valuable," John Carcerano, the Chicago area resident who found the plate, told Newsweek.
— Kitefrog (@kitefrog) February 2, 2025
Source: Newsweek https://t.co/TpGUZyZigq
The plate was worth way more than its price tag.
What he found was astonishing. A plate similar to the one he was holding in his hands had recently sold for $4,400. Armed with that information, Carcerano decided to pay $4.99 at Goodwill. “I knew within five minutes that I had something valuable,” he told Newsweek. “Only two of these have ever sold in the last 50 years of auction history.”
Someone else could have grabbed this valuable find.
Carcerano is a seasoned thrifter. In addition to his work as a carpet cleaner, he’s sold antiques for 35 years. While he’s a bit of an expert, he was fortunate to walk away with this piece of porcelain because three other people were digging through the cart that housed it at the same time.
“When everybody walked away from the cart, including me after we went through it, in the corner of my eye I noticed the plate was underneath a modern one,” he explained.
The plate’s condition is what makes it even more rare.
Since he purchased the plate, Carcerano has taken it to several auction houses to verify its authenticity, including Sotheby’s in New York. According to Newsweek, the plate has been confirmed as a Chinese export armorial chamfered rectangular platter from the Qing dynasty’s Qianlong period around 1775.
Its estimated value is between $4,000 and $6,000. What makes Carcerano’s plate even more special is the condition in which he found it. “…it was never eaten on or used; no scratches. It’s pristine,” he said.
