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Brown later found out from the Freeman s auction house in Philadelphia that the windows were originally made by Tiffany Studios and could fetch between $150,000 and $250,000.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.