{"id":46419,"date":"2026-02-27T13:31:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T13:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/a-woman-spent-25-on-a-quirky-cat-statue-at-an-estate-sale-it-turned-out-to-be-an-italian-art-piece-worth-3000\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T13:31:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T13:31:13","slug":"a-woman-spent-25-on-a-quirky-cat-statue-at-an-estate-sale-it-turned-out-to-be-an-italian-art-piece-worth-3000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/a-woman-spent-25-on-a-quirky-cat-statue-at-an-estate-sale-it-turned-out-to-be-an-italian-art-piece-worth-3000\/","title":{"rendered":"A woman spent $25 on a quirky cat statue at an estate sale. It turned out to be an Italian art piece worth $3,000."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6997395fa645d11881899860?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The ceramic pieces Jordan Piluso bought at an estate sale.\"\/><figcaption>The ceramic pieces Jordan Piluso purchased at an estate sale this year.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan Piluso<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Jordan Piluso, a 34-year-old mom from New Jersey, bought a unique cat statue at an estate sale.<\/li>\n<li>She later learned it&#039;s an Italian art piece by Fornasetti, which could be worth $3,000.<\/li>\n<li>She has no plans to sell it. It brings joy to Piluso and her home.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When Jordan Piluso went to a New Jersey estate sale in late January, she had one goal: to purchase a porcelain rabbit from the designer brand Herand.<\/p>\n<p>She&#039;d learned about the sale online and viewed photos of the items available. She didn&#039;t plan to buy any other decorative animals.<\/p>\n<p>But her mission quickly changed.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;When I walked into the house, this [ceramic] cat was sitting on a piano right in the entryway,&quot; the 34-year-old stay-at-home mom told Business Insider. &quot;No one was looking at it, so I just grabbed it. I thought it was such a whimsical, out-there decor piece, and that&#039;s my style.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>She later purchased the $25 cat decoration, along with a few other pieces. She didn&#039;t know it at the time, but her secondhand find was actually an Italian art piece from Fornasetti.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I love very eclectic, conversational pieces, and I just thought: I&#039;ve never seen anything like this cat,&quot; she added.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69974edaf8731049f3af6a05?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Jordan Piluso and the Fornasetti cat she bought at an estate sale.\"\/><figcaption>Jordan Piluso and the Fornasetti cat she bought at an estate sale.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan Piluso<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Hidden in plain sight<\/h2>\n<p>When Piluso purchased her cat statue, she didn&#039;t immediately look for markings or a signature indicating the artisan who made it.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I picked it up and was like, &#039;You&#039;re coming with me,&#039;&quot; she said. &quot;It was just a no-brainer.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The people running the estate sale were equally unaware of its origins.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They were just happy to get rid of it,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6997455de1ba468a96ac5189?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The Fornasetti cat decor piece that Jordan Piluso bought at an estate sale.\"\/><figcaption>The Fornasetti cat that Jordan Piluso found at an estate sale.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan Piluso<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It wasn&#039;t until Piluso got home and did a Google image search that she realized it might be valuable. She saw photos of similar cat pieces by the Italian artist Piero Fornasetti and noticed that each had a stamp at the base of its tail.<\/p>\n<p>Sure enough, her cat statue has one too. It reads &quot;Fornasetti Milano, Made in Italy&quot; and features an image of a hand holding a paintbrush.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69974a0df8731049f3af6953?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The Fornasetti stamp on the ceramic cat purchased by Jordan Piluso.\"\/><figcaption>The Fornasetti stamp at the base of the cat statue.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan Piluso<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Cats have been a signature motif for the late artist and his brand for decades.<\/p>\n<p>Its modern feline pieces retail between $73 (\u20ac62) and $2,353 (\u20ac2000) each, while vintage cat statues like Piluso&#039;s have sold for upward of $2,500 on secondhand sites.<\/p>\n<p>Piluso confirmed with the brand via email that it&#039;s authentic and was hand-painted between the late 1950s and early 1960s. Business Insider reviewed the email exchange.<\/p>\n<p>Ken Farmer, an antique and fine-art appraiser, told Business Insider that Fornasetti created over 13,000 designs during his career and aimed to bring art into ordinary homes.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;This playful, smiling cat ceramic figure with black leopard spots on a white field, circa 1960, is likely worth $1,000 to $1,500 at auction and $3,000 retail,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<h2>Valuable, but priceless<\/h2>\n<p>The potential profit she could gain from her Fornasetti piece doesn&#039;t matter much to Piluso. She has no intentions of selling it.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s something that brings me so much joy,&quot; she said. &quot;I&#039;m always going to be able to talk about this when people come over. I can tell my kids the story someday.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;To me, that is a far more valuable gift than the monetary value this cat could bring,&quot; she continued.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband, a dog person, was less convinced that they should keep the decor piece when Piluso originally brought it home. However, he&#039;s since come around, she said.<\/p>\n<p>The couple is keeping the ceramic cat, which doesn&#039;t have a name, on a tall mantle out of reach of their toddler.<\/p>\n<h2>Secondhand treasures<\/h2>\n<p>Don&#039;t worry \u2014 Piluso didn&#039;t leave the estate sale without the pink-and-gold embellished bunny she had initially gone there for.<\/p>\n<p>She purchased the rabbit piece for $600 and a ceramic tiger for $50 \u2014 both of which will be displayed prominently in her home.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6997394ce1ba468a96ac4f68?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The ceramic pieces Jordan Piluso bought at an estate sale.\"\/><figcaption>The decor pieces Jordan Piluso bought at a recent estate sale.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan Piluso<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Piluso said she&#039;s relatively new to shopping secondhand. She was looking for a hobby after having her second child, and eventually landed on decorating her home with vintage pieces.<\/p>\n<p>She said she loves the charm vintage decor adds to her home and the stories she can share with guests. That&#039;s why her husband encouraged her to create a TikTok account to share her finds with a wider audience.<\/p>\n<p>And clearly, she&#039;s a natural at finding hidden gems.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;When you go to estate sales or thrifting, don&#039;t be afraid of the oddities,&quot; she said. &quot;They can be the coolest, and in this case, some of the most valuable things you can find.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ceramic pieces Jordan Piluso purchased at an estate sale this year. Jordan Piluso Jordan Piluso, a 34-year-old mom from New Jersey, bought a unique cat statue at an estate sale. She later learned it&#039;s an Italian art piece by Fornasetti, which could be worth $3,000. She has no plans to sell it. It brings [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-46419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}