Texas Woman Finds 2,000 Year-Old Missing Sculpture At Goodwill

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A lot of people like to go hunting for personal treasures at thrift stores, estate sales, and at Goodwill. People collect so many items and things are handed down and eventually they end up being sold to strangers at a low price when they really are priceless.

The Houston Chronicle reported this week about a woman named Laura Young who is an antiques dealer who found a white marble sculpture in 2018 at a Goodwill in Austin. The sculpture weighed fifty pounds was on sale for just $34.99. Young felt it was a good purchase.

Young wanted to find out more about the piece so she contacted a London auction house where she learned that not only did she find something old, but also something that was stolen. According to the Houston Chronicle, the portrait bust was likely to be  that of a Roman General named Drusus Germanicus and is more than 2,000 years old, and it's been missing for more than a few years.

Leila Amineddoleh, a lawyer in New York who specializes in international art law, said that while some reports claim that the sculpture could be of Roman military leader Sextus Pompey, a majority believe it to be a portrait of Drusus. "Of course, that could be incorrect, but I believe most experts have identified the work as Drusus Germanicus," Amineddoleh said.

Its last known whereabouts were at a museum built by German King Ludwig the First called the Pompejanum built in the 1840s in the German city of Aschaffenburg.

So it must be worth a lot of money right? She can probably find an art collector and collect big or start her own collection, right? Nope. According to Matt Largey at KUT, Laura Young is stuck.

If nothing else she has a great story to tell.