Dear Alexis,

What you have here is a sandstone statue from India. Not sure wether it is Lakshmi or other figure from Hindu culture. These sandstone statues are of course very soft. In outside conditions they can rapidly become ''old'' . Therefor its not easy to tell the age of the statue. Normally when bought in recent times, you are not allowed to export ancient artifacts from India which makes me believe that is rather unlikely its an real antique statue. Also the absence of patin on the statue makes me believe it is not very old. Nevertheless it is a very attractive statue and I really think if this came to auction it would fetch a price around the estimate.