This is an intriguing mystery, on the west side of North Foster Avenue between Michigan and Vine. I have walked past this pair of stamps at different times of day, hoping I would find some combination of light and shadow that would make one of them legible, but I have given up. They are just too worn to give up their identity. The part I can make out, or at least I think I can, is the bottom arc: it appears to be “LANSING MICHIGAN.”

The style, typeface, and inclusion of the city and state are features characteristic of early stamps. Unfortunately, I can’t make out either the name or a date. The top arc is surely a name, and the depressed area in the center could well be a date, but there’s not enough left to have even a clue what it is. There are two stamps. The southern one has the somewhat readable bottom line, but the rest is hopeless. The northern stamp is deeper but no more readable, except that the first letter of the first line might be a K.

I’m sorry to say that this one is probably totally lost, except as a reminder of how old the sidewalks are and how many little mysteries are written on them.