The campus card has made significant strides over the years both in terms of aesthetics and in the technology that underpins the credential. However, the student ID card has almost always served the vital purpose of visual identification, and a recent story of a Minnesota woman and her lost wallet serves as a reminder of just how far the campus card has come.

As reported by the Star Tribune, Linda Rost thought she was the target of an online scam when she received a Facebook message from a woman claiming to have found her wallet. Rost's suspicion was understandable, as the wallet in question had been stolen some 50 years prior while she was still a student at the University of Minnesota.

But all suspicions were cast aside when the good samaritan provided a photograph of the wallet, and the key piece of evidence -- Rost's University of Minnesota student ID card.

Rost hadn't seen the lost wallet since it was stolen from under a cosmetics counter of a department store in February of 1969. She believes the thief may have ditched the wallet prior to fleeing the store, after which the wallet somehow landed in the building's duct work where it would rest for nearly fifty years.

In addition to reuniting Rost with some invaluable family photos that were also in the wallet, this story provides a rare look back at the earliest iterations of the student ID card.