Woman buys $3.99 vase at thrift shop, but it turns out to be a Mayan artifact so she returned it!

Five years ago, Anna Lee Dozier, a mom of three and cultural worker from Washington, D.C., bought a vase for $3.99 at a thrift shop in Clinton, Maryland. Surprisingly, the vase was a genuine Mayan artifact, not just a tourist reproduction as she initially thought.

“It did look old to me, but not old-old, like 20 to 30 years old, maybe,” she said in an interview, according to PEOPLE.

She felt the vase was connected to Mexico, a country she focuses on, and liked keeping it as a reminder. In January, Anna Lee went on a business trip to Mexico.

While in Mexico City at the National Museum of Anthropology, she was surprised to find vases that closely resembled the one she had bought for less than $5.

Struck by the similarity, she sought advice from a museum worker on handling artifacts from that era.

“Some of the things I was looking at looked awfully like what I had at home on my shelf,” she said.

Unsure they were authentic Mayan artifacts, she discussed them with someone in the museum offices.

Upon returning home, Anna Lee contacted the Mexican Embassy, sending them photos and measurements of the vase.

Embassy anthropologists verified it as a nearly 2,000-year-old ceremonial urn from the ancient Mayan civilization.

As she prepared to help return the artifact to its country, Anna Lee said her main worry was keeping it safe from her three lively sons at home.

“I was petrified that after two thousand years I would be the one to wreck it!” she said.

Despite her initial concerns, Anna Lee safely transported the vase to the embassy in Washington, D.C., where Mexico’s Ambassador to the U.S. eagerly awaited sending it back to Mexico.

In a post on X, the ambassador announced the return of the vase—a valuable piece of Mayan history—to the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.

“A valuable witness to our Mayan history returns home 🇲🇽 #México,” the ambassador wrote in Spanish in a post on X.

“Thanks to the generosity of Anne Lee Dozier, a US citizen, we recovered a classical vessel, dated between 200 and 800 AD,” said Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, adding that the vase, an important historical artifact, will be returned to the [Institute] collection to preserve our cultural heritage.

Anna Lee emphasized that returning the vase to Mexico held greater personal value than any potential financial gain.

She stated that giving it back felt more fulfilling than selling it for a significant sum on eBay.

“It’s really important to recognize that some of these things, especially with such historical and cultural value to an entire country and people — you can’t really put a number on that.”

Meanwhile, in 2021, archaeologists found hundreds of Mayan artifacts, like pottery and graves, during the construction of a train in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, CNN reported.

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said they discovered nearly 2,500 ancient structures, 80 graves, and many pottery pieces and bits along the “Maya Train” route.

Archaeologists from INAH, including ILeena Echauri Pérez, Iliana Ancona Aragón, and Silvianne Boucher Le Landais, used GPS, satellite images, and LIDAR sensors.

They uncovered various artifacts along a segment of the “Maya Train” route from Palenque, Chiapas, to Escárcega, Campeche.

Their discoveries included mounds and architectural bases with complex designs.

“Both the immovable archaeological artifacts and the movable ones expand the knowledge about daily life, and trade and cultural exchange relations that existed centuries ago in the Mayan area,” the researchers said.

Watch Anna Lee talk about how she bought the Mayan artifact she initially thought was just an ordinary old vase: