Posted on 04/27/2010 4:29:04 PM PDT by JoeProBono
HARRISBURG, Pa.- Officials with Goodwill thrift stores said a 2.6-carat diamond ring appraised at $17,600 was donated to a Pennsylvania store and will be auctioned online.
Goodwill Industries Keystone Area spokeswoman Jennifer Ross said the ring was discovered by Barry Landis, a retired jeweler employed to sort through donations at the Harrisburg distribution center, the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-News reported Tuesday.
"It could have ended up with a price tag of $5.99," she said of the find among the various pieces of costume jewelry donated to area stores. "It makes me think about what treasures might be out there in some of our stores."
Ross said the ring will be posted for auction in the Reading, Pa., section of www.shopgoodwill.com.
Paulette Lewandowski, who has served as Goodwill e-commerce manager for 10 years, said bidding will start at $15,000.
"I don't know that we'll ever top this," she said. "All we need is a matching bracelet now."
Honest jeweler. Good for him.
Is that value more than Obama claimed on his charity contributions?
The ladies at a thrift store in NYC once admitted to me, that someone had contributed gold jewelry, and that they had sold it as costume jewelry. This probably happens a lot.
This is why people prowl flea markets, tag sales, and thrift stores.
I think they should have posted that in a Lost and Found first... They say the ring was found among costume jewelry, I wonder if someone gave it away by accident?
I would hope that Goodwill made a reasonable effort to track down the owner. This was obviously an accidental “donation” — if anyone was knowingly giving something of this value to Goodwill, they would certainly alert the receiving staff as to what it was, and they would almost certainly request a receipt for tax purposes. This may well have been a case of a confused old woman dying or being moved to a nursing home, and her adult children clearing out mountains of accumulated belongings that consist mostly of worthless junk, and not realizing that in her confusion, their mother had tossed this diamond ring in with a bunch of junky costume jewelry.
The information provided in this article isn’t enough to alert the unwitting donor. It doesn’t even say what time frame, or what store or donation center the item was donated to — just “in Pennsylvania”, and then ended up at a sorting and distribution center in Harrisburg. There must be at least a thousand people who’ve donated stuff to Goodwill including some costume jewelry in the past few weeks.
Yeh, you are probably right. But, let’s think this through a little bit more. Even if the legitimate owner does come forward, it seems like she would have a hard case to prove. If Goodwill did put out a notice looking for an owner of a 17,000 dollar ring, can you imagine how many scumbags would try to claim it?
Obviously, they’d need to require some fairly solid evidence. But it’s quite likely that the donor would 1) have a Goodwill tax receipt for a pile of stuff donated recently at a Pennsylvania location that feeds to the Harrisburg distribution center, and some evidence that the ring belonged to their family, like an old picture of mom (who can be documented to have just died or moved to a nursing home, and had her house cleaned out) in which she’s wearing the ring and it’s visible enough for pretty good identification. There may also be some documentation in her papers somewhere showing she once owned it, e.g. an old insurance policy which listed it and which had a detailed description of it, or an appraisal certificate.
And the approach they’re taking now hardly avoids the problem of lots of scumbags trying to claim it. They’ve announced to the media that it was found with a bunch of costume jewelry, so obviously an accidental donation, and they’ve announced that it will posted on Goodwill’s auction site (obviously with a photo and detailed description of weight of the diamond, etc). Now scumbags will have some advance notice and be able to try to cook up phony “evidence” that it came from their family.
If Goodwill had made a public announcement that they were trying to find the owner of this accidentally donated ring, but given limited information about the ring itself, while giving more detailed information as to the time window and locations where it could have been donated, then that would have provided some alert to people who possibly were the real donors, to ask family members “Has anybody seen Mom’s wedding ring?”, and if they realize the family is missing something like this, they could contact Goodwill and provide a detailed description to see if it’s a match.
I shop good will and once picked up a 14K gold retirement watch from Park Davis with name engraved and dated 1965. Paid 4.99 cents, sold it for 100 dollars ...Also picked up a 1950 lucite purse for 1.99 sold it on ebay for 125 dollars...you have to know what you are looking at...but every once in a while you find a treasure...also for 39 cents bought a burger king fire king mug and gave it to my daughter ( I had quit ebay) she got 53 dollars for it..
I think you find such treasures because old aunt edna died and no one in the family really knows that she has, so the whole thing goes to Salvation army or Good Will for a tax write off..
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