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Jed Boal ReportingMany of us dream of striking it rich in the blink of an eye by winning the lottery or netting a fist full of cash through some twist of fate. That's what happened to a Layton woman who made a picture perfect purchase at a discount store.
Corrine Turner is not a professional art dealer, but today she sold two valuable prints to the Blue Boar Inn in Midway. The works are giclee (gee-clay) prints by modern Italian painter Pino Dangelico.
How Turner ended up with the art is quite unusual she sure didn't buy them at a gallery. She found them buried in the Basement Interior High Angle, a sell-anything discount store in Ogden.
Owner Mike Stoof buys goods from bankruptcies, misdirected, or mishandled freight and items from warehouse close-outs.
Everything from a quart of OJ and inexpensive shirts to a Mercedes Benz and everything in between. Stoof buys it by the truckload and prices it to sell.
Mike Stoof, Store Owner: “On some of the semis we buy, we have not a clue what's inside. We open up the doors and it's a surprise."
Turner picked up a roll of canvas wallpaper at the store about a year ago for 99-cents. When she opened it up recently for her remodeling project, she discovered it was worth a whole lot more.
Turner and her husband were stunned to find five prints.
Corinne Turner, Bargain Shopper: “At first we thought this can't belong to us, it just can’t, it has to be stolen or lost or still belong to the owner or something along those lines."
Online she discovered the Pino prints are worth $1250 dollars each. She contacted a Park City dealer and started to look for buyers.
The store owner explained that misdirected treasure has turned up before. A shipment of costume jewelry once produced six-thousand dollar diamond earrings. And while Turner offered to split her find with the store, he's a finder's keeper’s kind of guy.
"Mike Stoof, Store Owner: “Hey, you bought it, that's the type of store we are, you never know what you're going to find. We're happy for you."
The prints are on a hot list, not stolen, but likely to sell quickly on display at the Blue Boar.
Corinne Turner/Bargain Shopper: "You just don't walk in and buy wallpaper for 99-cents and turn around and have over six-thousand dollars worth of paintings in your hands, you just don't."
But, sometimes you just might.
The papers of authenticity haven't yet arrived, but the artist's son has told Turner the prints are for real.
