Field Notes

One object at a time. What it is, what is actually legible on it, what is still unresolved, and what a buyer should ask before paying.

• 3 August 2026 The $5 Syriac-script religious book A book nobody at the sale could read, bought for five dollars, with leaves from somebody else's prayer book tucked between its pages. The wrong answers, and why they were wrong.
• 3 August 2026 A paper-flower keepsake, a confirmation certificate, and one surname An 1882 handmade wedding keepsake and a German Lutheran confirmation certificate from Roseville, Michigan, and the detail that connects them.

What an entry contains

• Photographs of the actual object, including the marks and flaws that matter
• What is genuinely legible, separated from what is inferred and what is still open
• The questions that would collapse the uncertainty
• Why any of it changes what a buyer should pay

Entries are written from objects actually handled. Where something is unresolved it is left unresolved rather than filled in, and entries get corrected in public when a better answer turns up.

Looking for the how-to material instead? That lives in Guides. Photographs of odd things people have scanned are in Finds.