$8,000 Bag of Jewelry Mistakenly Sold for $3 at Garage Sale Finds Its Way Back to Widow After TV News Team Covers Her Story

June 5th, 2014

Karen Guin was “absolutely sick” when she realized that the Ziploc bag of jewelry she sold at a garage sale for $3 a few weeks ago actually contained $8,000 worth of precious keepsakes, including the wedding ring given to her by her now-deceased husband.

Guin’s two bags of baubles — one with costume jewelry and the other with precious jewelry — looked essentially the same, and the wrong one ended up at the sale.

"I had been absolutely sick about it for the first couple of days [after the sale],” the widow told ABC affiliate WHSV-TV in Harrisburg, Va. “Then I thought, I can't do this to myself anymore.”

Guin approached the news team at WHSV, which agreed to cover the story about the widow’s very costly faux pas. After the story aired, the widow prayed that the person who bought the bag of jewelry at the garage sale would do the right thing and come forward.

On Saturday, the widow’s prayers where answered when a Good Samaritan met Guin at her home.

"There was a gentleman that came up my driveway and he asked me if my name was Karen and I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said, 'I have your jewelry,'" Guin told WHSV.

The man, who chose to remain anonymous, had sold Guin’s jewelry to a local jewelry shop, and then made the extra effort to get the jewelry back once he learned of Guin’s mistake.

Guin was shocked by her good fortune and impressed with the man’s integrity.

“It was a surreal moment,” she said. “It was like, I don’t believe this is happening. I do not believe it.”

When she tried to give the man a reward for returning the jewelry, he wouldn’t accept it.

“He said the reward was him bringing it back and handing it to me personally," Guin told WHSV’s audience. "The qualities that this gentleman presented were far and beyond what you would see in a lot of people."