Collectors:
 
I have received 10 large boxes of shells willed to HMS by a woman who
died several years ago.  It will take months of off-time to just sort
them, even immediate dispatch to the "craft shells" category.
 
The shells came relatively well packed, but each box inside the large
boxes held an assortment of families, about half with no data slips.
The data slips were also nicely placed in boxes at random.
 
For the shells without data slips, the only saving grace was that each
data slip had an ID number on it and the shells had an ID, usually in
ink on rag paper pasted on the shell, but sometimes directly written on
the shell.  All that remains is the jig saw puzzle of matching shells to
data slips when one is available.
 
All going to demonstrate the wisdom of marking shells directly and
including the ID number on a data slip, in stead of just putting the
data slip inside the shell as I have done in my collection.
 
Aloha,
 
Wes