In 2017, Tracy Donahue paid about $4 for a thrift-store painting. Experts later authenticated it as an N.C. Wyeth work, leading to a six-figure auction sale

In 2017, Tracy Donahue walked into a New Hampshire thrift store looking for something much less valuable: a frame. She ended up buying a painting for about $4. At the time, there was little reason to think the artwork was anything special. It simply looked like an old painting among many other secondhand items.

Years later, the picture attracted attention. Art experts examined the work and identified it as an original by N.C. Wyeth, one of America’s best-known illustrators. The painting was Ramona , created in 1939 as an illustration for Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel of the same name. Suddenly, Donahue’s $4 purchase had a very different story.