Man Buys Rare $12.99 Thrift Store Find—Then Learns Who It Really Belongs To

An Ohio thrifter made the most unexpected of discoveries during a recent visit to a local second-hand store.

Andrew, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, regularly posts pictures of his finds to Reddit under the handle u/NoneTheLeast and makes no secret of his love of visiting thrift stores.

But during one recent visit to a new store, he came across a large My Little Pony plush toy that made him stop in his tracks.

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"It's a lot of fun trying to divine out diamonds in the rough from the random selections of stuff they usually have, and it's different every time," he told Newsweek. "I usually look for vintage cast iron or old electronics."

When he discovered the My Little Pony, he knew there was something special about the "elaborately stitched" toy.

My Little Pony toys are always worth a closer look when hunting for potentially valuable items, with retro pieces occasionally worth significant sums.

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In the U.K. earlier this year, a mother and daughter stunned viewers of the hit television show Antiques Roadshow with their collection of My Little Pony toys dating back to the 1980s which, they revealed, had been valued at £30,000, or nearly $40,000.

Andrew, who builds and paints figurines of Pokemon and other characters, is familiar with My Little Pony fandom.

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"I used to watch the show when I was a little kid and have a few friends who are big fans of My Little Pony. So when I saw a character I didn't recognize and it being so large, densely stuffed and elaborately stitched, it immediately stuck out to me as being custom commissioned," he said.

The fact that it stood at nearly three feet tall and was priced at just $12.99 also piqued his interest, though he did wonder whether there was a "sad story" behind it.

"Bespoke plushies like that are very expensive and personal to the commissioner," he explained. "Usually the only time you see something like that thrifting is when someone has passed away and the folks donate them without knowing how much they are worth."

In any case, he decided to take a few pictures to send to his friends who are My Little Pony fans, to see if they could shed any light on the find and he left the store soon after.

His friends advised that the plush had likely been lost rather than donated and Andrew later returned to the store and bought it for $12.99.

That proved to be the start of something extraordinary. Posting a picture of the plush to a hobby group on social media, within minutes Andrew received a message.

A user called Dusk had conducted a reverse image search and had been able to track down the toy's original owner.

"Dusk found a Twitter post from last year that had a seemingly identical one [plush toy]," Andrew said. "The post author Yaop's plush had been lost for months in US customs in California. I reached out to Yaop via Twitter DM to confirm if they were really the same."

Eventually Yaop, who was at a My Little Pony convention at the time, explained that they had paid $1,000 to have the toy custom made, only to never receive it.

"It's popular in a lot of cartoon fandoms to create your own sort of alter ego original character that fits within the style of the show," Andrew explained. "My Little Pony-related ones are named 'ponysonas,' which is short for pony persona."

This particular plush was of their ponysona "Swift" and had been commissioned by Yaop from an artist who handmakes them overseas.

Though the plush had initially been shipped out, once it arrived at US customs in Los Angeles, tracking stopped updating for six months until USPS officially declared the parcel lost and paid out insurance to the commissioner.

How exactly the toy ended up in a thrift store some 2,000 miles away is a mystery. Andrew has his own ideas about what might have happened though.

"My running theory is that the outer package received damage or in some other way fell through the cracks, and Swift was then moved into a surplus warehouse, and sold on a pallet at a bulk government undeliverables auction," Andrew said.

"Then someone down the line gave him to their kid, and later the kid got tired of him and donated him to the thrift store."

The story did have a happy ending though. After getting in touch, Yaop was able to provide an address for Andrew to ship the toy to.

He took extra care to ensure it arrived safely this time, having it sent by UPS in a package wrapped in "as much tape as possible."

"The package safely arrived a few days later and Yaop got their plushie [after] coming home from the My Little Pony convention," he said.

Andrew was even sent a picture of the toy alongside an identical one Yaop had made when he realized the first one was lost.

It all made for a remarkable turn of events that has taught Andrew a couple of valuable lessons.

"There's a lot of coincidences in life that have a million in one chance, but there's so many of them if you look you'll be guaranteed to experience at least a few," he said.

"Also fandoms are truly amazing. That through just a few dedicated people in such a short amount of time I could help find a missing $1,000 package, is just so cool."

Despite not ending up with the toy, over the years Andrew has nabbed a variety of thrifted bargains that he continues to use today. "Almost all of my cookware is thrifted Griswold cast iron that I restored by cleaning them with lye," he said.

"The bread machine I use I got new in the box for, like, $12.99. My TV, alarm clock, tabletop lamp, uranium glassware set and a bunch of other stuff are all from thrift stores."