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Sometimes, a true treasure requires neither a museum nor an elite gallery — just a chance visit to an estate sale. That is exactly how a small painting by American artist Gertrude Abercrombie ended up in the hands of a buyer who paid just $30 for it. Several months later, the work sold at auction for an astonishing $1.3 million, setting a new world record for the artist.

The story of Alderman Merriam’s Shells (1951) could easily have ended at an ordinary estate sale in Michigan. But one discerning buyer managed to recognize a genuine work of art in the small painting.

On October 1, the painting was offered at Freeman’s New York with an estimate of $150,000–$200,000. Yet as bidding got underway, it quickly became clear that the market was willing to pay far more. In the end, the work, measuring just around 20 by 28 centimeters, sold for $1.3 million including fees.

For Abercrombie, it was a new world auction record. The previous record — $1 million — had been set in November last year at Sotheby’s in New York, when her painting Message for Mercy (1950) sold for that amount. As recently as early 2025, the artist’s auction record stood at $864,000.

In other words, the value of Abercrombie’s work has surged dramatically in just a few years — and now one of her paintings has brought its lucky owner a sum roughly 43,000 times the original $30 purchase price.

The painting itself has an almost cinematic backstory.

Gertrude Abercrombie was born in 1909 and spent her childhood constantly moving from place to place, following her parents, who were professional singers. She later settled in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, which at the time was a true creative laboratory. Abercrombie moved in artistic and musical circles, and her friends included legendary jazz musicians Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

Abercrombie once gave Alderman Merriam’s Shells to Dr. John Reynolds of Kalamazoo, Michigan, in exchange for surgical services he had provided. Reynolds remained the painting’s sole owner for decades. He even lent it to museum exhibitions, but over time, the work virtually disappeared from the radar of collectors.

It eventually ended up among the belongings from an estate being sold in Michigan. That was where it was purchased for just $30.

When a photograph of the painting landed in the inbox of Freeman’s specialist Zach Wirsum, he initially paid little attention to the message.

“I get messages like this all the time, so I didn’t have high hopes,” he recalled.

But the moment he opened the image, everything changed. “I immediately knew it was an incredible example of her work. And I had never seen it before,” Wirsum said.

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