A Dallas shopper's routine stop at a charity shop has ended in an auction result worth nearly 3,000 times what she paid. Heritage Auctions said the colour woodcut she picked up for $5.99, Gustave Baumann's Bright Angel Trail from 1930, sold for $17,500 in its Texas & Western Art sale on 5 November. The print, signed and numbered by the artist and carrying his hand-in-heart ink stamp, became the week's most talked-about lot.

The sale itself was led by a record. David Bates's Sunflowers, painted in 2003, brought $325,000, the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting by the Texas artist, passing a benchmark Heritage itself set in 2020. Across 244 lots the auction totalled $1.93 million, drawing 842 bidders from around the world, with 96 percent of lots finding buyers.

Two more artist records fell in the same session. Lee N. Smith III's Red Sea, Dead Sea, from 1989, made $35,000, and Billy Hassell's Night Fishing on the Wind River, from 2003, reached $27,500. Maynard Dixon's Roundup, painted in 1927, brought $137,500, while two watercolours by John P. Cowan made $81,250 and $75,000.

The following day's Ethnographic Art sale added $648,331 across 357 lots, taking the two-day total to $2.58 million. A Gran Cocle transformation pendant from Panama, made between about 700 and 1000 CE, led that sale at $20,000, ahead of a carved polychrome pottery sculpture by Tammy Garcia at $16,250 and a Veraguas gold bat pendant at $13,750. The Baumann consignor, who called the experience one of the most exciting of her life, said she hoped the story would encourage others to look closely at unexpected finds.