A LOOK BACK:

It’s one of those archetypal legends. A man finds a priceless piece of art covered in dust in his attic, decides to clean it off and get it appraised and becomes an overnight millionaire.

Retired autoworker Andrew Lakatosh didn’t think twice when he got a roughly 3-foot tall replica of the Statue of Liberty from his wife’s godfather in 1948.

Thinking it couldn’t be worth all that much, Lakatosh stowed the piece in his sister’s cellar for eight years and then kept it in his garage until 1962 when the idea struck him to make the relic into a front yard lamp.

Starting the project, he saw the signature of Frederic Auguste Bartholdi — the French sculptor who designed Lady Liberty — etched into the base of the statuette along with the inscription, “1875 registered in Washington D.C. 31 August 1876” and a number that matched the copyright number on file with the Library of Congress.

An initial appraisal from a Beverly Hills art dealer, one Arthur LaVinger, said that it was one of two that the famous sculptor had personally cast and given to Washington officials before the full-size statue was erected in New York Harbor in 1886.

It was worth at least $25,000, the appraiser estimated.

A later appraisal put its value at $200,000 — the equivalent of millions today.

Lakatosh spent the next 15 years touring the statue around, restoring it, clipping newspaper articles about it and declining lavish offers to buy it. In 1976 it spent a year in a Costa Mesa art gallery insured for $250,000 and surrounded by a $2,200 burglar-proof case.

It was part of the gallery’s bicentennial celebration.

Then, the following year, the man who had appraised the statue for nearly a quarter-million dollars came forward and said he had made a mistake.

A slew of replica statues widely distributed to raise funds for the construction of the statue all had similar inscriptions on the bases and bore the same copyright number, the appraiser told the Times.

“There’s no way of verifying if it’s one of the two originals,” he said.

A subsequent analysis revealed that there were many significant differences between Lakatosh’s model and the second of the two original statuettes, owned by the Chemical Bank in New York.

For one, Lakatosh’s was much shorter — 33 inches to the original’s 54. It was also cast in white metal and covered in bronze leafing; the original was fully bronze.

After spending thousands of dollars on the piece and resting so many hopes on it, Lakatosh saw the writing on the wall.

“All this thing has ever done is cost me money,” he said. “I think I was happier when I didn’t know what it was.”

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.