If you don’t already shop on eBay, a recent post on the Washington Post‘s Reliable Source gossip blog might encourage you to dig around the auction website. Last year, a local woman sold her Priscilla of Boston wedding dress–purchased in 1959 at Saks in Detroit–to an antiques dealer, who then listed the reportedly flawless vintage gown on eBay for a mere $29. The winning (and only) bidder was Greg LaVoi, costume designer for the show The Closer, who was seeking “the quintessential 1950s gown” for Kyra Sedgwick’s character to wear for her wedding. LaVoi tracked down the original owner, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I do quite a bit of business on eBay: new Paige skinny jeans for 30% of the retail cost, a Kenneth Jay Lane elephant bangle bracelet so cheap I thought it was fake (it’s not), Frederic Fekkai root-lifting spray that I can’t justify buying at full price. However, this tale of a vintage dress brought to life reminds me of my favorite eBay purchase–perhaps one of my most prized possessions in my closet. It’s a buttercup-yellow spring coat, circa 1960s–and mine for $45 plus shipping. It’s Jackie Kennedy’s sophistication meets Ann-Margret’s youthfulness. It’s perfect. I know it has a story in its fibers, though the story is a mystery.

The yellowed ivory label says “Jeannette Beck, Baltimore, Maryland,” a designer who does not seem to exist in the depths of Google. I find it ironic that I purchased the coat from a vintage dealer in California, yet it ended up just 40 miles from its birthplace. At some point in its life, someone–perhaps a consignment-shop clerk, or the owner herself at a yard sale–scribbled “10.95” in red ink on the label. That price is too low for such a quality vintage item, which makes me believe the ink, too, is decades old. My coat has no fabric or care label, though it’s thick and tweedy and flawless, with a purple, green, and orange striped lining that doesn’t seem to have aged a day. The eight bronze buttons have minor scratches–perhaps from being tossed over a coffee-shop counter or church pew. Did the original owner run around Baltimore, breaking hearts and feeling like a million bucks? Was she a desperate housewife who, now in her seventies, still has a coordinating pillbox hat in her attic? Maybe it was a gift, hated and never worn. I’ll never know.

But I do feel like a million bucks in it, classy like Jackie yet sassy like Ann-Margret. And I bet no one in the world–or at least D.C.–has anything like it. Sure, you can likely find something new that’s similar. But my vintage treasure is the result of sifting through hundreds of listings of junk and days of anxiously waiting for bidding to end. It’s the perfect shade of yellow, and somehow, the perfect fit without alterations. It cost $45, and it has a story–at least, I like to think it does.