... finds of the day

1. A stamp, postmarked "92". That doesn't seem right, I thought. That is not a design of stamp that is consistent with 1992. Not at all. What gives?

   .... it's only a Penny Lilac.

2. Huh, I thought. ŚRODKOWA LITWA POCZTA. That's... got to be Lithuania, right? ... right? UM. WELL. SORT OF?

The thing is, you see, that I thought I'd left all the interesting stamps with the rest of the family papers. I thought the oldest stamps in my stash would be from the 60s. The 1960s. And yet! I went! through every single one of them! Just in case! because that is what you have to do with anything that came out of the mouldering ancestral pile!

I mean, and also because I'm very fond of stamps that feature botanical illustration or interesting technology or science or The History Of Postal Systems or Hungarian pandas or, better even than Hungarian pandas circa 1977, botanical illustration advertising an exhibition of botanical illustration and philately...

... but still. STILL. 1882!!! Unrecognised short-lived puppet republics!!! How on Earth this all wound up in Papa's (and I use the term loosely) collection I shall almost certainly never know.