The first answer came from Bonhams, a well-known auction house. It confirmed Young's hunch: the bust was ancient Roman.
But Bonhams would go no further. Without provenance, the record of who has owned an object and where it has been, it said it could be of no further help.
So Young had a Roman bust with no past. Nobody could tell her where it had been, or how it had come to sell for $34.99 in Texas.