They’re in the money… In 2021, an unnamed online shopper found a pastel drawing labeled as a "fake" Degas and bid on it for $1-thousand. With the help of art expert Michel Schulman, they identified it as "Éloge du maquillage" (In Praise of Cosmetics), a long-lost Degas piece.
The discovery was revealed just last week at the Institute Français in Madrid. Originally listed for around $1, the painting's true value is now estimated to be between $8-million and $13-million. How did they figure out this was the genuine article? Schulman said in an interview that it happened “after an exhaustive analysis of pigments, a meticulous study carried out with X-rays and photographs, among other techniques.”
Source: ArtNet