Woman finds 2,000-year-old Mayan vase at Maryland thrift store

 The priceless artifact was a bargain when Anna Lee Dozier purchased it at a thrift store in Clinton, Maryland, costing just US$3.99 (C$5.50), officials said.

2,000-year-old Mayan vase at Maryland thrift store

The vase is believed to have been made by indigenous Mayan people in Mexico between 200 and 800 A.D.

Woman finds 2,000-year-old Mayan vase at Maryland thrift store

A Washington, D.C. woman discovered a link to ancient history when she purchased a 2,000-year-old Mayan vase.

The vase remained in Dozier's home until January of this year, when she visited Mexico's Museum of Anthropology and discovered that the Mayan pottery at the museum looked just like the one she had purchased.

Dozier, who told WUSA9 she purchased the vase five years ago, said she had no idea the artifact was real.

She said the vase looked "old-fashioned" and suspected it was a 20 or 30-year-old tourist replica of Mayan-style pottery. Dozier liked the vase anyway and decided to bring it home.

Dozier said she asked an employee at the Museum of Anthropology how she could get her rescued vase back.

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The employee told Dozier it was a normal question, but her inquiry was "suspicious."

Still, Dozier contacted the U.S. Embassy for information about the vase.

Dozier later learned the vase is actually a ceremonial urn from an ancient Mayan community.

On Tuesday, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S., Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, thanked Dozier for her "generosity" in getting the artifact back.

He said the vase would be reunited with other Mayan antiquities at the country's Museum of Anthropology.

Anna Lee Dozier standing in front of a table of artifacts next to Armando Arriazola and Esteban Moctezuma Barragán. View image in full screen

Photo of Anna Lee Dozier (center) with Armando Arriazola (left) and Esteban Moctezuma Barragán (right), director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. Dozier's Mayan vase was returned to Mexico and will be displayed in the country's Museum of Anthropology.

Dozier told WUSA9 she is "thrilled" to have the vase returned.

"I want it to go back to its rightful place and where it belongs," she said. Dozier admitted she wanted the artifact "out of her house" because she has three young sons and was "scared that 2,000 years later, I would be the one destroying it!" She's not the only person who has found a priceless, historical object for sale at a thrift store. In 2018, an art collector in Texas discovered a 2,000-year-old Roman marble statue at his local Goodwill and purchased it for $35. The statue previously resided inside a full-scale model of a villa of Pompeii in Aschaffenburg, Germany, but was stolen from the country during World War II.