‘Dumpster diving’ yields a treasure

A woman looking for old crockery in a trash container in the western Austrian town of Zell am See stumbled upon a medieval cross that could be worth more than half a million dollars, Salzburg police said.

The woman, who has not been identified, apparently did not know what she had found in 2004, but last month, a neighbor took it to a museum in the village of Leogang. It’s unclear whether the woman will get any money.

An investigation revealed that, until World War II, the cross was part of an art collection belonging to Polish nobility at Goluchow Castle, police Col. Josef Holzberger said.

Experts determined that it is from Limoges, France, and dates to about 1200.