I’m having difficulty remembering the title and author of a story story, but I think it was a relatively famous author from the late 19th or early 20th century. In fact, I thought it might be by Anton Chekov but was unable to find a title match among Wikipedia’s list of short stories he’d written.
Here’s the essence of the short story: a guy buys a [lamp/candle holder/object] from a market vendor for 5 [rubles/pounds/dollars] and manages to sell it for 500. Surprised by his stroke of good luck, he decides to share half the amount with the vendor who sold it to him. Then he thinks that the vendor has no idea how much he might have sold it for, so why share half? A similar sequence of realizations occur, slowly dwindling the amount to nothing.
Any ideas?