Shopper bought a vase for $3.99 at a thrift store — it turned out to be a 2,000-year-old Mayan artifact

It was a truly historic bargain.

A Washignton, DC woman was thrilled when she picked up an “old-ish” looking vase at a local thrift shop for just $3.99 – never realizing the bargain knickknack was actually a genuine piece of history.

The vase turned out to be a 2,000-year-old Mayan artifact that is now headed to a Mexican museum.

“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 Lee Dozier told WUSA-TV this week .

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But in January, Dozier was in Mexico on a work trip and spotted hauntingly similar items in an anthropology museum. Curious about her vase, set about getting a professional assessment.

A month later, she learned that it was a ceremonial Mayan urn dating to 200 to 800 AD – a priceless treasure nearly 2,000 years old, WUSA reported.

“I am thrilled to have played a part in its repatriation story,” Dozier told the outlet. “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!”

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This week, she and her boys turned the vase over to Mexican Ambassador Estaban Moctezuma Barragan at the Cultural Institute of Mexico, where it will join other pre-Columbian treasures.

“When you have strong roots, you know them and you honor them,” Barragan said at the ceremony. “She recognized that a whole country, a whole culture cares about it, and we are deeply in gratitude with her.”

Meanwhile, Dozier told the outlet she’s happy she made the right decision.

“Human rights extends to culture and history,” she said.

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