For the return of a $1 mil painting, a 1.5% thanks?

There were some funny comments yesterday on Boing Boing regarding the 15k reward Elizabeth Gibson received after finding a stolen painting on the street and returning it to its owner.

They reflect my feelings on the matter: someone finds your 1 million dollar painting, and you throw them 15k? A 1.5% tip? (Of course the painting hasn't realized its auction estimate yet.) Gibson put a lot of effort into tracking the provenance of something she found left out for the trash, doggedly pursuing the matter even when a former auction house employee told her the painting wasn't worth anything. She even went down to Baltimore to watch a rebroadcast of the Antiques Roadshow segment "Missing Masterpieces" just to make sure she really did have "Tres Personajes" in her possession.

The owner picked it up at Sotheby's twenty years ago for 55,000, and that is what the reward fee is based upon. Sotheby's is giving Gibson a finder's fee, but the New York Times article suggests it is less than the reward.

I wonder if Gibson kicks herself for not selling the painting herself. It might have been difficult, since it was being sought by the F.B.I.–but still. I bet the trailer park resident who found the $189,000 Charles Rolphs chair in his neighbor's garbage didn't knock on the guy's door and offer to return it for a small consideration.

But other commenters on Boing Boing said they'd be more than happy finding 15k sitting out on the curb. So would I, but I guess my greed increases in relation to the perceived worth of the score.

What would you do if you suspected you'd found something valuable left out for the trash?

UPDATE 12/04/07:

According to Showbizspy, the Texas woman whom "Tres Personajes" was returned to was approached about increasing the reward, but refused:

Gibson said that when she got the painting back to the woman through contacts at Sotheby’s, she hoped the owner would increase the reward a bit, considering two decades of inflation and the fact that experts expected it to sell for between $750,000 and $1 million.

But the woman - who has not been identified - wouldn’t budge, Gibson said. “People tried to get her to give me more,” she said. “But she wasn’t interested.”

The painting beat expectations and sold for $1,049,000 in the Latin American art auction Tuesday.

The owner wouldn’t give her a percentage of the sale. Gibson said that Sotheby’s felt so bad for her after all her work that it gave her an undisclosed percentage of the sale commission.

“I basically gave her a million dollars,” they report Gibson as saying, but she later added that “In the end I feel very blessed. This is the best Thanksgiving ever.”

Comments

[joan roberts]

Hey, 15k is 15k. Obviously, this young lady was not deterred by naysayers and certainly did her homework, but appraisers don't get that kind of money very often! You mention that the painting hadn't realized the million dollars at auction, and very well might not. I think the owner was generous.
Joan