Trying to avoid another pedestrian, I walked on the other side of Regent Street from my usual (west instead of east), and was rewarded with this. Just as I recently found a Minnis & Ewer stamp with a date of 1911 after being disappointed that all the ones I had found thus far were undated, tonight I have finally found a dated V.D. Minnis stamp. And what a date.
It’s faint but I’m confident in it: that is “- 07” beneath the company name. Most likely there had been a month in front of that, but that’s lost along with a chunk of the concrete. Too bad, as that might have allowed me to say whether this was my oldest stamp yet. The slab is in very poor condition, even worse than this photo makes clear as I only included the area around the stamp. The rest of the concrete is just as bad, fractured in several places and succumbing to weeds and dirt. Next time there is a big sidewalk replacement project, if not sooner, this will be gone. But for now it remains in the 200 block of the west side of Regent Street, between Kalamazoo and Michigan.