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What if you found an item you bought in a charity shop was worth thousands of pounds?

B3B3 Posts: 27,505
in The potting shed
Would you:
In London. Keen but lazy.

What if you found an item you bought in a charity shop was worth thousands of pounds? 23 votes

Keep all of the money
17%
Hostafan1Sazz101BeeCeedjosmond41 4 votes
Share the money with the charity
43%
TopbirdBeaus MumRobert Westplant pauperSuesynErgatesBigladLunarSeaRBMancohdeereme 10 votes
Give all of the money to the charity
8%
janetfossLiriodendron 2 votes
Other
30%
[Deleted User]madpenguinLG_SkandicoccinellaJennyJEmptyheadtime 7 votes
«134

Posts

  • LiriodendronLiriodendron Posts: 8,328
    Give all of the money to the charity
    This happened to my dad.  He bought an old book about ferns, with hand coloured illustrations, from a charity shop, then discovered it was rare and worth about 30 times what he'd paid for it.  He went back to the shop and paid them what it was worth.  He wasn't hard up at the time - but I suspect he'd still have acted the same way if he had been.  

    I hope I'd do the same...
    Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
  • rowlandscastle444rowlandscastle444 Posts: 2,612
    Depends which charity it was. I'd share with some, not others.
  • philippasmith2philippasmith2 Posts: 3,742
    Other................... If it was a charity I was happy to support and I was able to sell the item,  I'd give all the money back to that charity.  If it was a charity that I don't usually support but had no particular objection to, I would share any money made.  If I didn't agree/support the charity's aims, I would keep the money but donate to something I considered worthwhle.
  • LG_LG_ Posts: 4,360
    Other
    Depends.
    If I'd bought it, that assumes I wanted the item and therefore wouldn't sell it, so there would be no money to donate. If I kept it and later wanted to get rid of it, I would probably donate it back, telling them what it's worth, rather than selling it myself and donating the money. 
    If I could afford to go back and pay what it was worth to the charity, then I hope I would do that (but that raises the question - would I have bought it in the first place at full price?). 
    There's also the question of timing: if I bought it years ago and then found out it was now worth thousands - as seems to happen quite often on antique shows - I might not even remember which shop / charity I'd got it from, and it might not have been worth anything like that back then. I used to get a lot from jumble sales in my teens. They would generally have been in aid of a charity, but if I now discovered something was worth a fortune I'd be hard pushed to know where I'd got it!
    'If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.'
    - Cicero
  • JennyJJennyJ Posts: 10,576
    Other
    I'm with @LG_ . If I'd bought the item it would be because I liked it and wanted to have it in my home so I wouldn't be selling it, and if it was worth much more than I'd paid I probably wouldn't have the money to give them the actual value unless I sold it. If it turned out to be worth so much that I didn't want to pay up to add it to the house contents insurance, I might sell it and give them the profit.
    Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
  • SkandiSkandi Posts: 1,723
    Other
    Again it depends. If I knew it was worth something when I bought it I would make a larger donation once I had sold it. probably about 1/4 to a 1/3 of the value. If I didn't know it was worth anything and found out later, then no I would probably keep it.
  • KT53KT53 Posts: 9,016
    Again it depends.  For local charities I would at least share the money.  For national charities which seem to spend more on executive pay and fancy offices than is really necessary - they could whistle for it.
  • SalixGoldSalixGold Posts: 450
    I found bought a book in an Oxfam shop and flipping through it at home years later realised that it was a signed first edition from a famous writer. Unfortunately it seems I gave it away by mistake in a house move.
  • RBMancRBManc Posts: 59
    Share the money with the charity
    This happened to my mum once. I had asked her to keep an eye out for Harry Potter books for me and she found a Chamber of Secrets for 50p. When I was looking through it I noticed it was a first-edition. Sold it at the time and ended up getting just over £300 for it so we donated £150 back to the charity and used the rest for a bit of a treat... Maybe a bit naughty. 
  • SalixGoldSalixGold Posts: 450
    I had first editions of Harry Potter - but I gave them all away
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