Woman bought a vase for $3.99 at thrift store—it turned out to be a 2,000-year-old valuable historic artifact
Many people enjoy thrifting as a hobby and love finding valuable things for a bargain. However, one woman didn't know that she'd paid $4 for a 2,000-year-old treasure. The woman, Anna Lee Dozier, thought that she had found a really good copy of a Mayan vase and decided to buy it. She had no idea that the vase was an original and a priceless artifact for its country of origin. She discovered that soon enough and her decision made the country grateful, per WUSA 9.
The woman from Washington, DC, had found the vase on one of her usual thrift store trips on the clearance rack of 2A Thrift Store in Clinton. "It looked old-ish, but I thought maybe 20, 30 years old and some kind of tourist reproduction thing, so I brought it home." Anna had worked as a human rights advocate for the indigenous communities in Mexico and felt that it would act as a good souvenir of her time in the country. "I could see that it had some kind of link to Mexico, in terms of what it looked like, and since it's a country that I work on and it's really important to me, I thought it would be just a nice little thing to take home and put on the shelf and to remind me of Mexico," Anna told NPR.
It had been years since Anna bought the vase when she went to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City in January 2024 for a work trip. She was surprised to see that the Mayan vases on the shelves and their uncanny resemblance to the one she had at home. "Some of the things I was looking at looked awfully like what I had at home on my shelf. I still was dubious that it was real, but just thought it looked enough like that that I asked to speak to someone in the [museum] offices and just ask, if I had something of interest, what would be the process to authenticate that."
Anna recounted that the museum staff member she spoke to had heard that a lot, so she was not sure about what she could exactly do for Anna, per WUSA9. "She was a bit skeptical but said you would go back to your country and contact the embassy." Around a month after the interaction, the woman sent a few pictures of the vase to the embassy, along with its dimensions. She was surprised to find that it was real and belonged to the indigenous community from 200 to 800 AD. The embassy explained the details about the artifact and shared that they would like it back. Anna was glad to comply.
Un valioso testigo de nuestra historia maya regresa a su hogar 🇲🇽#México.
— Esteban Moctezuma Barragán (@emoctezumab) June 18, 2024
Gracias a la generosidad de Anne Lee Dozier, ciudadana estadounidense, recuperamos una vasija clásica, datada entre el 200 y 800 d.C. Esta joya histórica será reintegrada al acervo del @INAHmx para… pic.twitter.com/ySsF1vCU5k
"I am thrilled to have played a part in its repatriation story. I would like it to go back to its rightful place and to where it belongs. But I also want it out of my home because I have three little boys and I have been petrified, well, it’s gone now, but I was petrified that after two thousand years I would be the one to wreck it!" Ambassador Moctezuma Barragan expressed his gratitude to Anna. "When you have strong roots, you know them and you honor them. She recognized that a whole country, a whole culture cares about it, and we are deeply in gratitude to her." Anna met with the ambassador, who shared an X post after the country received the artifact back on his account @emoctezumab.