$50 Garage Sale Find in Minnesota Could be a Long-Lost Van Gogh Painting

Have you ever found something awesome at a garage sale? Finding that unique thing for a good deal on something is so satisfying! I've found clothes that I love at garage sales. Garage sales are also a place where I love to find seasonal decor.

You can also find some great home decor at garage sales, and that's what was found at a Minnesota garage sale.

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Long-Lost Van Gogh Painting Found at a Minnesota Garage Sale

While out at a garage sale in Minnetonka, someone discovered a nice-looking oil painting. It shows a fisherman smoking a pipe and repairing a net. They purchased the painting for $50.

I'm not sure if this person realized that they had found something amazing or not when they purchased the painting or if they found out after the fact, but the painting was eventually sold to LMI Group International, a New York-based art research firm, in 2019, according to UPI.

After a process that took years, LMI just recently revealed that they believe this painting to be a long-lost painting done by none other than Vincent van Gogh.

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Prior to LMI studying the painting, it was studied by the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands. They said the painting was not by Van Gogh because of "'stylistic features'" that didn't match.

LMI, however, says otherwise. Their findings report is a whopping 450 pages long. In it, they talk about how this painting, now called 'Elimar' because of an inscription on the corner, was likely done in 1889 when Van Gogh was in a French psychiatric asylum towards the end of his life. This is also around the same time that he painted the very well-known 'Starry Night'.

They say that 'Elimar' does match Van Gogh's style at the time and, the really interesting part to me, they found a strand of red hair in the painting that DNA testing determined belonged to a human man.

The trouble is, it can't officially be a Van Gogh painting until Van Gogh scholars and dealers say so. LMI will be presenting what they found to a group of them in hopes of getting the painting authenticated. If it is, it could be worth around $15 million.