An unemployed young man with a metal detector discovered it on Cumbrian farmland in northern England. Now a Roman cavalry helmet dating from the late first or early second AD has sold at Christie’s London for $3.6 million, many times its highest pre-sale estimate of $400,000.
“The most hauntingly beautiful face to emerge from the British soil in more than a century,” according to the Guardian, the helmet was designed for parades, not combat. It is only the third to have been discovered in complete form in Britain, and the first since 1905. The buyer was an anonymous telephone bidder who outlasted the Tullie House museum in Carlisle, which had launched a fundraising campaign in hopes of acquiring the object. The anonymous young fellow with the metal detector, now wealthy, will split the proceeds with the owner of the land on which the helmet was found
Read more at The Guardian.
