Jean Preston, according to all of the newspaper accounts, was a modest woman. They say she travelled by bus, bought her clothes from catalogs, and ate frozen dinners. But this librarian seems to also have known a thing or two about the finer things of life. Here's what they found in her house after she passed away:
Two panels of the San Marcos altarpiece by none other than Fra Angelico.
The two panels, one of which you see to the left, sold at auction for approximately $3.5 million. Her dad bought them back in the sixties when she commented on how much she liked them. Original purchase price? Less than $500.
But just like those infomercial ads, "Wait, there's more."
She also had a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and another by Edward Burne-Jones. Estimated worth of the pair: $2 million.
Don't worry though, as a librarian, she also valued books. She had a rare edition of Chaucer's works, worth about $150,000.
All told, she had approximately $8 million worth of valuables in her home. Not bad for a retired librarian living on a pension.
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