Regulars or those with some familiarity with this blog or friends and visitors to the house who’ve obliged me when I’ve bid them enter the “museum” of artifacts I’ve collected during various excavations know that the backyard of our house has yielded up everything from a silver-plated teaspoon from the Beverly Hilton to an at-least 42-year-old whisky bottle to a seemingly authentic German army helmet from World War II and a whole bunch of other bric-a-brac.
Well, today I was back at it, trying to upright a broken and severely leaning section of pony wall up in the back and to do so required me to shovel out deep behind it. During the course of the dig, I unearthed a whole bunch of old nails, a blue marble, a small brown glass vial, the arm of a small toy doll, a nice piece of steel that looks like it could be a stirrup but probably isn’t, and some more nails.
Then came this:
[click image to enlarge]
It’s the corner of an 83-year-old license plate — the “23” indicates the year it was issued as back then it was stamped directly on the plate. I was thrilled by this piece because it’s the first example of a find that leaves no doubt as to how old it is.
Of course during the rest of the shoveling I kept a sharp lookout for other pieces, but none were to be found.
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