There were certainly shell stores and dealers in the early 1950s, when
I started collecting on
family vacations to Florida.

In Fort Myers Beach, around 1952, there was Jack's Shell Shack, on the
road out of town
(probably San Carlos highway).  I inveigled my parents into buying me
a little baby junonia for $5 and I still have it.

There were at least two shell shops in Key West. In 1952, I went into
one of them
with my mother, and there was a twenty five cent basket of poor quality
shells.  In it
was a pair of really encrusted lion's paws, and what I knew was a Conus
sennottorum ( how I was able to identify the shell with some certainty
is another story) just
being brought up by the shrimp trawlers in the Gulf of Mexico.  I asked
the owner about the C. sennottorum - did he really want it in the
basket ?
and he snarled that it was an alphabet cone (C. spurius).  So I
proffered fifty
cents and got both shells.

Then we went into the next shop.  There in a case was a pair of
bright yellow Aequipecten muscosus.  I had to have them !  I had read
about their rarity as an unusual color variety in my shell books. They
were also $5.  I didn't have that much, just a few dollars, and really
didn't want to beg my mother.
Then - an idea.  I offered the C.sennottorum as a partial trade,
explaining how
it was a deep water shell and not a spurius.  The dealer accepted the
story -
perhaps he also knew - and I think for a mere $2.00 or so plus the
sennottorum,
(don't remember the proportion exactly) the "yellow pectens" as they
came to be known in family lore,
were mine. I still have them and the grungy lion's paw, as well.
My mother and I celebrated the fun of this shell shopping with several
slices
of key lime pie at a nearby restaurant (a diner I think).

Just one more memory, from a few years' earlier.

We were driving North  in 1950 from Pompano Beach.  I saw a shell store
on the right side of the highway - I believe around Palm Beach.   My
father pulled the big Mercury off to the side.
There was a whole barrel of pairs of Tellina radiata outside the shop,
3 pairs
for a quarter, I recall.  I couldn't believe such a beautiful shell,
and so cheap. Inside
they told me the shells were from the Bahamas. So I bought 3 pairs.
Still love this shell and
collecting them myself, but never again have I seen them in such
abundance.

Karen
Pittsburgh, PA

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