$1 Purchase Turns Out to be Cartier Purse Worth Nearly $10,000

#Purchase #Turns #Cartier #Purse #Worth

With a little help from her online friends, a vintage clothing storeowner discovers an “old” bag is really a fantastic diamond-studded Cartier find. Now she has thousands of reasons to smile.

Sometimes, patience – with a smattering of online good fortune – is a virtue.

Just ask Chandler Lesesne West, the owner of a vintage clothing Etsy store who purchased a small silk purse for $1 online more than a year ago then forgot about it. Thanks to some online detective work, she discovered it was a vintage Cartier piece and recently sold it for $9,450 at auction.

Chandler Lesesne West in her TikTok video with her fantastic find, a Cartier purse worth almost $10,000.

@ciao.chandler

“This is the story of how this antique handbag that I bought for $1 ended up being worth two to three times my rent,” West, of Charlotte, North Carolina, said at the beginning of a video, shared to TikTok, which shows her holding her fantastic find.

In the video, West said she came across the purse in November 2021, while sourcing items for her Etsy store at an online estate sale. After purchasing “a large lot of vintage clothing” for $75, she looked around at smaller items and decided to add the purse because she thought it looked “antique-level old” and was worth more than the $1 asking price.

The 1920s Cartier purse features 12 diamonds.

Rago Auctions

Seeking help on Facebook, West heard back her purse might be a 1920s French art deco evening bag, and that the gems in the buckle could be diamonds. A jeweler later confirmed the bag featured 12 diamonds. West chose Rago to sell the bag at auction in February. Rago described the 51/2 by 8 ¼ inch purse as a signed Cartier silk handbag with a lapis lazuli, red enamel, and single-cut diamond clasp from the 1920s. The pre-auction estimate was $2,500-$3,500.