Looking not all that worse for wear after decades in the ocean, one of the thousands of Teddy Bears that washed up along Little Compton shores in September 1993 decided to reveal itself to a beachcomber at Warrens Point last week, 30-odd years after it was lost.

Missing the argyle sweater that was apparently on all of them, the bear was found Friday morning by Peter Goldberg. His black lab Georgia gave it a sniff after they spotted it in the sand but decided it wanted nothing more to do with it, and he decided to leave it where it was.

“A couple other people spotted it,” he said.

The bear is one of thousands that littered area beaches after The Norfolk Trader, the barge transporting them from New Jersey to Boston, ran into trouble about four miles off Sakonnet Point on Sept. 27, 1993. In all, many thousands of stuffed bears, shoes, slippers, dehumidifiers, VCRs and other goods were lost, and many of the toys and shoes washed up on local beaches.

The Teddy Bears have since become legend in Little Compton. One couple scooped up more than 400 of them, washed and dried them at their Little Compton summer home, and brought them to Connecticut, where they were distributed to needy children that holiday season.

Another wrote a children’s book about the bears. “The Shipwrecked Teddy Bears, A Real Story,” by Elizabeth Carpenter was sold at Wilbur’s for years after the incident.

The Little Compton Historical Society keeps a bear in its collections, and Goldberg’s spouse Cherry Arnold said that many, many Little Compton residents have an old Teddy tucked aside somewhere.