Woman thrifted a 'cool' statue head for $35—then sunlight revealed it was a priceless Roman antique
Thrifting comes with the thrill and possibility of finding something really unexpected and interesting. A woman was also hoping to find something cool when she went thrifting at Goodwill. However, she had no idea that she would come out with a Roman bust around 2000 years old and priceless in its value. The woman, Laura Young, had purchased the statue back in 2018 and was taking a picture of the same when she noticed an important detail that left her stunned, per BBC.
Young had bought the statue in Austin, Texas and knew that it was really old by how it looked. However, she had no idea that it was an antique piece with such a high value. She had brought the statue out and strapped it to her car seat when she realized there was something special about the statue that looked like a realistic face of a man. The sunlight revealed its true condition and Young, an independent antique and vintage dealer, did a Google search to find out more about the statue. It looked similar to a Roman marble bust from the first century BC or the first century AD. It was thought to be the statue of Sextus Pompey, a prominent military personality who fought against Julius Caesar.
"I'm not even sure how it's possible to put a meaningful monetary value on something that has such an important history, but on the other hand could never, ever be sold," Lynley McAlpine, a representative from the San Antonio Museum of Art, remarked. "He looked very nice. And he was just there staring at us for three plus years," Young shared. The statue was supposed to be loaned to the San Antonio Museum of Art before it was returned to Bavaria. Young explained that it was something that might have been looted from its home in Pompejanum in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg during World War II. So she couldn't really sell it. The bust was kept in the woman's living room for quite some time as the negotiations happened.
"He looked very nice. And he was just there staring at us for three plus years," Young expressed. In 2023, the woman told CBS Austin, "He has been out of the house for a year now. I am probably in denial." She added, "He was a life-sized face in our living room. When you walk in, he was the first thing you would see. He was a constant physical presence." The woman had bought the bust for around $35 from Goodwill. Young thought that the marble bust was gorgeous when she saw it at the store for the first time. The statue is believed to be part of a collection belonging to King Ludwig I of Bavaria. "He is going to go back to the collection of the Bavarian palace administration."
Nobody was sure how the statue reached from Bavaria to Texas. "Thank God he didn't get purchased by someone and get put in their backyard," Young went on. "I am glad I was the one who rescued him. I do believe that I did rescue him, literally." @aaronkuntze7494 commented on the YouTube video, "It happens a lot... We had a priceless painting donated to Goodwill in Seattle that was stolen from a museum in Europe by Hitler's henchmen and returned to its rightful owners."