Philadelphia Man Pays $6,000 for Old Church Windows; They Turned Out to be Tiffany Glass - The Messenger

A Pennsylvania man got more than he bargained for – and paid for – after purchasing two cracked and dirty rose windows for just $6,000 from an old church, not knowing that they may be worth up to a quarter million dollars at auction.

Paul Brown, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, bought the windows last fall from a rundown Gothic Revival church that was built in 1901 in West Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The church’s new owner, the Emmanuel Christian Center, had planned to remove the windows from the church’s wall during the conversion of the building into a worship space and youth center.

Brown later found out from the Freeman’s auction house in Philadelphia that the windows were originally made by Tiffany Studios and could fetch between $150,000 and $250,000. Freeman’s estimates that the windows were likely commissioned around 1904 as part of an expansion of the former St. Paul's Presbyterian Church.

via themessenger.com

Lovely story for contracts profs.