The auction market for Gertrude Abercrombie has a new ceiling — and a new Cinderella story. A painting by the Chicago artist, picked up for just $30 at a flea market or estate sale, has sold for $1.35 million, a record price for the painter of spare, dreamlike interiors populated by witchy cats and enigmatic figures. The result was reported on 1 October, continuing a run of extraordinary results for an artist whose work sold for a fraction of that sum only a few years ago. The numbers behind the boom are striking. According to the Artnet Price Database, in the year before Abercrombie's breakout show at Karma in New York, her paintings fetched just under $75,000 in total at auction, with prices generally hovering around the $10,000 mark. In the years since, 80 of her paintings have sold for more than $100,000, with 83 percent exceeding their high estimates. Her four most expensive works have all sold since 2024, a period in which her total annual sales have consistently topped $3.5 million. Last November, her 1950 canvas Message for Mercy — a slate-grey room with a witchy cat — became the first Abercrombie painting to pass the $1 million mark, more than tripling its high estimate at Sotheby's New York. The new $1.35 million result pushes that benchmark substantially higher. Dealers and market watchers say there is no sign of the momentum slowing, particularly as supply tightens. As one observer noted, Abercrombie's paintings possess all the ingredients to enchant: a limited palette, intimate scale, and a weird cast of nursery-rhyme characters. For the lucky buyer who paid $30, the enchantment has proved very literal — a return of some 45,000 times the original outlay.