The Urban Archeologist: The Tops, A Tin, and a Tootsie

As we come to the end of 2013, I want to offer up a few of my favorite stories from this year. I began writing about my lifetime hobby in 2009 and since then have created over 500 posts between my contributions to Patch and to my own personal blog Confessions of an Urban Archeologist.

 Here are my favorites:

 The find that may well define my purpose on this planet came from a discovery of World War II items, which told the story of a Connecticut son lost in the battle for Northern Africa. It was a story I couldn’t tell until I was connected with one of the surviving brothers. Click here to read that story.

 I am always interested in old paper, especially when it reflects information in such an exaggerated way. This highway safety pamphlet uses language and imagery that might evoke the wrong message today.

 I have only just begun to shoot video of estates as I discover them. This story and video of a palatial home in New Canaan, Connecticut turned out to be one of my most popular posts of the year. Take a look inside this 3 million dollar estate sale.

Not everything I find is based in the East Coast. This pamphlet of Universal’s movie studio tour from the mid 1960s turned out to be a unique piece of tourist history.

I also learned about the West Coast origins of the immensely popular folk group “The Kingston Trio.” When I stumbled over some books at sale early in the year. The autographs by the original members of the band revealed this find to be a special piece of Folk music history.

New on the blog this week is a “dig” found in a different kind of container. A metal cookie tin gives up a tiny secret in the form a of a toy car, which leads to a backstory that I wasn’t aware of.