$2 Painting Might Be a Picasso
Woman may have sold an original Picasso painting at a garage sale.
Oct. 23, 2009 -- Edith Parker said she's still in shock.
This week the Shreveport, La., resident learned that she might have had an original Picasso painting in her possession, potentially worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars but sold it at a garage sale for $2.
"I was floored. I had no idea in my wildest dreams that I could possibly have had millions in my driveway and sold it for $2," said Parker, who lives in a Shreveport trailer park.
Parker held the sale to help out the relatives of an an 84-year-old neighbor -- a frequent art collector -- who had recently died.
The neighbor's relatives lived out of town and had tried to sell his belongings at an estate sale the week before, she told ABC News. Because they didn't want to transport the unsold items home with them, they gave them to Parker.
Among those items was a painting that had "Picasso" written on it, but when she asked her neighbors' relatives about it, they said it was a fake and told not to worry about it, she said.
"I kept looking at this picture and said, Well it don't look like much, and it was in this cheap little frame," Parker said.
So she sold it for $2, along with a number of other items at the garage sale that netted her about $500.
"Evidently, I sold a lot more than that," she added.
Parker said she learned the painting might actually be an original work by Pablo Picasso when Teisha McNeal, the woman who bought the painting, returned to her house with a camera crew from the local news station.
McNeal declined to comment to ABC News, but she told KLSA in Shreveport that after some quick Internet searches led her to believe the painting may be stolen, she contacted the FBI.
The FBI refused to comment to ABC News on the current status of the painting but did say that this work is not in the national stolen art file.
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