Thirty Dollars, and the Right Eye: A Modest Purchase Brings $1.35 Million

It cost thirty dollars when someone carried it out of a sale of a household's contents. At auction, it brought $1.35 million. Anyone who has spent a season walking the tables of an island house sale, past the rattan and the monogrammed linens, knows how rare it is for the eye to be right and the price to stay that low. This time both happened, and the bidding confirmed what one patient buyer saw first.

With reporting from Town & Country.