Prize Possessions

What I'm about to show you is currently marked down at #1 in my mental list of The Very Best Things I Own. I own a lot of junk too, but - I've given it an A+ in all of the following categories:

1. Interestingness
2. Rarity
3. Condition in relation to Age
4. Just plain 'ol general awesomeness

. . .







. . .

Uhmmmm, whaat!?!? I didn't even know something like this could exist in the world! Not only are there 12 beautiful animal stamps but there's also three ink pads and a slew of other little paper bits all stamped up and colored on!







. . .

I'm not entirely sure on the age. The company was founded in 1860 and one of the ink pads says 1910 on it... so it's somewhere between 150 - 100 years old ... crazy, right? It blows my mind that a children's stamp set could survive its early years with the original owner, never-mind be carried along through the generations! Or maybe it belonged to a very fussy, and particular child who kept their toys neat and shiny and after they grew out of these stamps they were kept safe inside a box only to be rescued years and years later. Who knows! And that's part of the fun about it!

All I have to say about its prior life- whoever this little bebe was had some amaaazing crayon color blending techniques!











. . .

I also really love how simple the stamps are in comparison to the drawings that accompany them!

























. . .

Now I just need to track down a stamp pad. In the shuffle of moving I seemed to misplace all of mine, and would you believe it- Dick Blick doesn't carry even a silly blank ink pad?!?