If you’re anything like me, you will carefully study every old and yellowed newspaper you ever come upon, hoping to discover some charming or shocking bit of historical trivia, only to throw down the paper in disgust when you realize it was just the 2006 Washington Post NFL preview section, or a 2001 profile of an expert gardener, or something similarly boring.

But reader Steve Chakerian discovered a pot of gold when his mother started re-doing the kitchen in her Georgetown townhouse: a 1938 edition of “Washington Shopping News,” stuffed in the wall space, with a Redskins ad.

The text (see below for the image):

CHALLENGE TO ANY COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAM IN AMERICA

“The (Washington) Redskins offer to go anywhere and play any single college team in the country a sixty-minute game under any rules, behind closed gates, without benefit of [UNREADABLE] office, to prove they can beat a college [UNREADABLE] any day in the week.”

If you look at the bottom, this challenge appears to have been signed by George Preston Marshall.

“As you can see, the paper is so delicate it pretty much breaks apart upon the slightest touch,” Steve noted in his message. “It has been in the wall of a Georgetown home for 74 years.”

Steve plans to get this framed, appropriately. He also pointed out that if the Redskins tried this tactic nowadays, it might help their record.