Mobile phones again top the list of lost and found items. An outboard motor, a motorcycle helmet and even a blue boat were also taken to the police to be returned to the rightful owners.

The list of items, published in The Malta Government Gazette every three months, is rich in electronic equipment, with tablets and cameras being quite numerous, alongside wallets and cash.

One Good Samaritan handed in a silver Rolex watch, which sells for a few thousand euros, and another passed on a number of soft toys, worthless to everyone except the child who lost them, one imagines.

The list includes everything from a billiard cue to a rubber dinghy

By law, anyone finding lost property (intriguingly, the law specifically excludes “treasure troves”) is obliged to return it without delay to the original owner or deliver it to the police.

Anything the police receive is held for six month, after which, unless claimed by the original owner, ownership falls to the finder and, failing that, to the State. Where the original owner is successfully reunited with the lost goods, the finder is entitled to a reward and possibly – although this is not prescribed by law – some sort of warm, fuzzy feeling.

This year’s odder entries, in a list that has previously included everything from a billiard cue to a rubber dinghy, include a fire extinguisher and bolt cutters, apart from the boat and the outboard motor already mentioned.

Mobile phones again top the list of lost and found items.

Go back a bit further to the last quarter of 2015 and you can add a butcher’s knife, a fishing rod and – inexplicably – a juice extractor to the list.

In a sign of the times, two drones also make possibly their first, but almost certainly not last, appearance on the list. The remote-controlled devices, surging in popularity among photographers and hobbyists (and, of course, journalists), are supposedly equipped with fail-safes that should return them to their operator if connection is lost. Around the world, however, plenty of people have reported their drones soaring off as if of their own accord, often easing themselves down to earth out of sight of their operator.

Other novel entries include one lost Tallinja card, which – given that there are supposedly 232,000 of the cards in circulation – means they clearly have a remarkable resistance either to being lost or to being found.