The Best Things in Life are Free

I LOVE collecting antique photographs. Cabinet cards, CDVs, stereoviews, you name it. In fact I have a website of my collection which I recently had to take down due to hosting limits (though I am starting to put them back up on http://livesinsepia.blogspot.com/). Another passion of mine is my collection of nineteenth century French and English (ok and some reproduction) fashion plates from publications such as Goodey's and Peterson's. Anyway, after our move I was in the process of rehanging my fashion plates on the wall and I noticed one of them was coming loose from its frame. I took the cardboard backing off and couldn't believe my eyes when I found this!
It's sepia toned, but I adjusted it so you can see more detail. Looks like 1880s-1900's based on the lady's wild mutton chop sleeves, but I'm no expert in dating. Either way, it's so cool. There was also a vintage Kellogg's Corn Flake ad on back of the cardboard which looked to be from at least the 40s, so at some point someone decided to re-purpose the frame and covered up the photo. Here is the fashion plate it was behind:

I wonder how long these people would have been hidden behind there if I hadn't decided to take a peek when the frame was loose? There is no information written anywhere on the photograph, but I bought this particular fashion plate in New London, Connecticut a few years ago. Who knows who they were, but at least now they won't be completely forgotten!