Laura Young shares how her experience of buying a $35 antique Roman bust from a Goodwill store in Austin, made her viral on the internet and took her on the adventure of a lifetime.
It all happened in 2018 when she saw an amazing bargain at the local thrift store, and she later realized that this bust was actually an ancient Roman one. So she went around emailing auction houses to see how much it would sell for.
Weeks later, the Head of Antiquities at Sotheby's in London replied to her saying confirming that it indeed was an ancient Roman bust, but that it was actually catalogued under the Bavarian State Antiquities Collection. Which meant that it was highly likely that the bust was stolen.
After the call, she contacted the Germans and the art history departments at the University of Texas to help her return the bust to its rightful owners. When the Germans got back to her, she found out that it was definitely stolen during WWII, when the Allied forces bombed Aschaffenburg where the bust was being kept. And perhaps one of the soldiers looted the bust, brought it home to the US, and kept it in their attic or basement for the next 70 or so years, before being sold to the local thrift shop.
Initially, her plan was to loan the bust to the San Antonio Museum. She had to convince the Bavarian state and the German federal government about the idea, and when everything was all approved, the pandemic happened, putting a halt to all of the plans she had thought of for the bust.
So, it stayed with her for the next four years until the San Antonio Museum was scheduled to pick it up. Then, as the date was nearing, she decided to take a picture with the bust. And that blew the floodgates wide open. The picture became viral online, and news outlets started picking up the story of how she found this stolen ancient bust at a thrift shop.
The rest of her story details how her life became so busy and hectic after it all went public, because of all the interviews, calls, and appearances that she had to do on TV about the bust. And that's Laura Young's happy little accident with the stolen ancient Roman bust at the Austin Goodwill thrift store.
(Video credit: Tiny Talks)