Woman Snags Priceless Roman Bust For $35 At Texas Thrift Shop

In 2018, an antique dealer with a good eye snagged a 2,200-year-old Roman bust at a Goodwill in Austin, Texas for just $35, after going into the thrift store “hoping to find something cool.”

An independent antique and vintage dealer, she told the BBC she went into the thrift store “hoping to find something cool”.

On closer examination in the sunlight, the bust looked like it could be “really, really old”, she said. She did a quick Google search for Roman marble busts and thought they looked similar. -BBC

It looked “really, really old” said Laura Young, who snapped a picture of the Roman bust sitting in the passenger seat of her car after the purchase.

“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 from the San Antonio Museum of Art told the BBC.

The bust may represent Roman military leader Sextus Pompey, who fought against Julius Caesar.

An attempt to trace its origin revealed that the bust was linked to a replica Roman Villa in Germany which exhibited legitimate artifacts next to replicas.

The Pompejanum in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg was built in the 1840s and had been severely damaged by Allied bombing during World War Two.

How the bust got from Aschaffenburg to Austin is unclear, but it seems probable that an American soldier took the statue to the US. American troops were stationed in Aschaffenburg until the end of the Cold War.

And because it was probably an item looted during war time, Ms Young could not think about selling it as an antique. -BBC

Young has loaned the bust to the San Antonio Museum of Art, after which it will eventually return to Bavaria where it will sit in the Pompejanum. While negotiations were underway, she kept the bust in her living room.

“He looked very nice. And he was just there staring at us for three plus years,” she said.