Cherished Christmas Gift

This past Sunday I ventured out to my favorite flea market where I meet an old friend nearly every month.  Now if you browse around my blog, it won't take you long to realize I like to paint signs on just about any flat surface that I find, especially old cabinet doors. 

It was pretty cold on Sunday, and I hadn't taken much cash, and I just wanted to go home as I had been there since 5:30 in the morning and this was about 8:00, but my friend convinced me to make one more trip around the vendors to see if anyone new showed up.  We came upon this old box full of stencils.  There is no date on it, and the city and state on the box have no zip code and the only reference I found on the internet was 1947.  This box is a complete set of old stencils with many different fonts and sizes.  What a great find!  Neither one of us had seen anything like this and it was a complete set with an intact box that is beautiful in its own right.  I was so excited and to my even bigger surprise my friend insisted this was my Christmas gift from her.  I cannot wait to get all the stencils out to see exactly what is in there.

 This box is beautiful.  It is called a Showcarder.

 Each category has at least two to three stencils in it, plus it has the original instructions and font sample pamphlet.  Is this a cool gift or what?  Beautiful, practical and oh so special.