> If you are indeed serious, may I be the first, Paul, in a long line of
> folks that would be more than happy to send you a couple of spare twenties
> for a couple of nice (if not gem) milneedwardsi? Please let me know where
> to send the money, okay? Along with my undying gratitude.
I'll have to play devil's advocate a bit here, and go to bat for dealers.
They have to schlep across the planet several times a year, harangue the
often less-than-candid local lads in far-flung, unhygienic corners of the
Third World; try to arrive at the best spots before their rivals have a
chance to get there and snap up the good stuff; brave the steely gaze of
customs in both directions; clean, label and box the shells (and we all
know what fun THAT is); make up lists (than which there is no more boring
job); travel to shows and set up tables; sit there like a lemon for hours;
and explain to the taxman what they do for a living. Dealers are thus
justified in wanting a living wage, and the shell-buying public has to
accept that the price they pay for a cleaned, labelled specimen at a show
in New York is going to be different from that paid in grubby notes to a
fisherman for a plastic bag full of stinking corpses on a dockside in
Zamboanga. The serious collector eventually cuts out the middleman and goes
there himself, and I have never heard anyone who has tried this then
complain about dealers. The milneedwardsi I referred to came straight from
Thailand, and passed through no more than two sets of hands. I merely used
that price as an example of how the mighty have fallen.