"Ask your mother what she did with those old plates of mine," he told me.

Vehicles can display their old provincial plates for 90 days before they must be registered in the territory.

He lifted out one of the old plates and handed it to Ky.

I asked my husband to turn in my old plates, as I myself could not come actually to part with them.

I was, by this point, impressed with how much trained eyes could read into old plates and pitchers.

"It's a good argument for keeping old photographic plates," he said.

"A beauty to you that old plate truly is?"

For years I took the strange, dirty-looking old plate around with me.

In those places, the old plates finally go away, often to a collector.

But, in other places, old plates never die or fade away.