In 2018, a Queens shopper paid $1.99 each for four Picasso plates; experts authenticated all four, and four years later, three brought in $34,000 at auction in 2022

A second-hand shopping trip in Queens, New York, led Nancy Cavaliere to discover four ceramic plates inscribed with the name of Pablo Picasso. The plates were purchased for $1.99 each at a Salvation Army thrift shop, and eventually authenticated as works from the artist’s Visage Noir series. Three of them were auctioned separately in December 2022, and Cavaliere watched the sale online. According to The Guardian, the first plate reached $8,000, followed by $10,000 for the second, while the final plate sold for $16,000, bringing the total to $34,000.Finding Picasso in the homeware aisle After getting married in 2014, Cavaliere had developed a penchant for second-hand shopping while furnishing her first rented apartment. Saddled by the high cost of conventional home decor, she chose thrift stores as an alternative to look for furniture, clothing, and decorative objects. She also created an online blog to chronicle her vintage discoveries and share the experience with other thrift shoppers.In August 2018, following several weeks without finding anything, she visited a large Salvation Army shop in Queens. The clothing section did not offer anything that piqued her interest, so she headed towards the homeware aisle before leaving. Among the china, she found a plate decorated with a painted face, and its white lines and turquoise details stood out against a black background. This inspired her to envision how the plates would look when arranged on a table during formal hosting or dinners, and she decided to buy them.The pieces were in good condition, and when she turned one over at home, she noticed an indentation bearing the name Picasso. Next, she contacted a friend who worked in antiques to verify whether the indentation was credible or not. Although her friend advised her not to assume the plates were authentic, she encouraged Cavaliere to purchase them because of their distinctive appearance.Soon after, Cavaliere contacted an auction house that dealt with Picasso ceramics and sent videos along with photos for the examination. The specialist confirmed the authenticity of the plates and offered to arrange their sale, which was scheduled for years later, and according to The Guardian, the auction house valued each plate at $5,000.The ceramics behind the discovery The plates belonged to Picasso’s Visage Noir series, a collection of hand-painted ceramic works he produced in southern France while working at the Madoura pottery studio, after meeting its founders, Suzanne and Georges Ramié, as per the Vallauris town hall page. The studio was located in Vallauris and played an important part in the artist’s ceramic work, stimulating his creative exploration of forms and surfaces beyond his paintings and sculptures.For his ceramic work, Picasso used plates, dishes, bowls, and other objects and decorated them with faces, animals, and abstract designs. These works were a result of combining pottery with visual language and making art out of everyday objects. Cavaliere’s plates had the same geometric faces, which were consistent with the type of imagery that made Picasso ceramic work recognisable to collectors.Ultimately, the three plates were sold; Cavaliere retained the fourth and planned to sell it in the future and use the proceeds to benefit her daughter. The proceeds from the three plates were invested in the stock market because Cavaliere did not want the excitement of the sale to lead to impulsive spending. In May 2023, Antique Trader reported that she was keeping the fourth piece in a safety deposit box and intended to wait 20 years, until about 2043, before selling it.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.