Dude Makes Purchase at Thrift Shop and Gets the Buy of His Life

 

I hate this guy.

Have you heard of Michael Sparks? No? He’s a guy who walked into a thrift store back in 2006, made a really cheap purchase, and soon discovered he’d found the mother of all finds. But first let us regress a couple years . . .

In the early 00s a Tennessean named Stan Caffy had been asked by his wife to clean out the garage and ditch all the junk he’d acquired through the years. He complied, and reluctantly took an old copy of the Declaration of Independence off his garage wall and donated it, along with other odds and ends, to a local thrift store. Caffy had bought the copy for $10 at a yard sale 10-years prior. Keep that in mind.

Soon thereafter, another Tennessean named Michael Sparks strolled into the same thrift store (the Music City Thrift Store in Nashville), a normal part of his weekly agenda. He picked up a candelabra, a set of salt and pepper shakers and that old copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

He paid $2.48 for it.

“I’ve seen Declarations of Independence in thrift stores before,” said Sparks. “This one was so beautiful I thought it was an engraving. I look for things that have quality to them. I decided to look into it further.”

Yep, what you are thinking is true. The copy happened to be one that John Quincy Adams commissioned William Stone to make in 1820. Stone finished printing just 200 copies in 1823. Only 35 of these documents were known to exist until Michael Sparks purchased number 36 at a freakin’ thrift store in Nashville, Tennessee for $2.48.

Read that again. Michael Sparks purchased one of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence for $2.48.

But wait, there’s more.

Although the original appraisal was for over $200,000, Sparks sold the artifact to a Utah investment firm for $477,650.00.

You read that right. $477,650.00.

Listen, I’m no math wizard, but I believe that’s a profit of $477,647.52 minus the auction house’s take and whatnot. Unbelievable.

And if Stan Caffy wasn’t feeling badly enough for giving away nearly half a million bucks, Michael Sparks left him with this zinger:

“I guess it just doesn’t pay to keep a clean house.”

Ouch. Unnecessary, Mike. Unnecessary.