The Roman Empire Might Have Made It To Texas
Walk into a Goodwill on Far West Boulevard in Austin, Texas, and you expect bric-a-brac—not the marble gaze of ancient Rome. Yet that’s exactly what confronted Austin antiques hunter Laura Young in 2018: a 52-pound marble head resting under a table, a yellow sticker on its cheek that read $34.99. She bought it, buckled it into her car, and drove home stunned.
First Impressions: “Clearly Antique—Clearly Old”
Young deals in vintage objects; patina and tool marks speak to her. The bust’s weathered surface, chisel traces, and weight screamed marble, not plaster. At home, a quick image search for “Roman bust” confirmed her hunch: stylistically, “they look a lot like my guy.” The mystery had begun—and with it, a modern odyssey through museums and archives.
Woman buys a 2000-year-old roman bust for $35 at thrift shop, WFAA
The Price Tag Versus The Provenance
The absurdity of a millennia-old sculpture marked at $34.99 hints at the chaotic afterlives of ancient art. Objects slip from palaces to private homes, from battlefields to basements, and sometimes—astonishingly—onto thrift-store shelves. In this case, that sticker masked a backstory stretching from a 19th-century Bavarian prince’s collection to the devastation of World War II.
Woman buys a 2000-year-old roman bust for $35 at thrift shop, WFAA
A Closer Look At The Stone
Marble reveals age in subtle ways: softened edges, micro-pitting, and an idealized yet individualized Roman portrait style. Experts would later date the head to the late 1st century BCE or early 1st century CE—exactly the era when Roman portraiture prized realism (verism) balanced with august gravitas…