About three years ago I was detecting a private residence here in my small home town. I recovered what appeared to be a junk piece of lead from a hole about 6" deep. Upon further examination I discovered it to be an old lead printing plate. I thought it was pretty neat at the time but didn't examine it too closely.
Upon returning home I washed the plate off and began trying to read the text of what appeared to be an advertisement. Since it was backwards for printing I found it easier just to scan the image and flip it in the computer. I was quite surprised to learn that it was an advertisement for a product made in Kalamazoo MI called Zoa ~Phora and was dated 1872. This product is know to be one of the many "snake oil" products sold in the 1800's. Kalamazoo, MI was the source of 9 of the dozen or so products of this type sold in the U.S. at that time.
I took the plate to the next club meeting where it won the most unusual category for the month. Our club happens to have many bottle collectors and one of them said they had a Zoa~Phora bottle they had recovered from an outhouse pit. The following month I was presented with the bottle to make the collection complete.
I left it at that until just recently. Going stir crazy from the winter weather I decided to try to print from the plate to add to the Zoa~Phora collection and make it easier to read the advertisement on the plate. My success was limited as you can see.
I decided to take a trip to the local library to scan the microfilm of the Marshall Statesman from 1882 looking for the ad. It didn't take more than an hour to find two ads for Zoa~Phora, one of which is the exact ad that is on the plate.
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In addition to that, printings of that ad dated later began showing wear of the plate around the top right corner. Comparison of the later printings and my test print have convinced me that the plate I found is the same one used to print these ads. Notice the small white areas that match in the legs of the A and to the bottom left of the P.
One of the joys of this great hobby is being able to piece together different parts of the history puzzle. Although this is not a major historical find, it is a nice collection of a part of our past.